OPTI Inc. announced Friday that the U.S. District Court in the Eastern District of Texas had found that Apple infringed on patent No. 6,405,291. The extra $2.7 million was added as pre-judgment interest, bringing the total cost to Apple $21.7 million.
OPTi's $19 million victory was made official in April, when a jury in the Marshall Division court found that Apple "wilfully" violated three claims in the patent, which describes a system for predictive snooping of cache memory that helps shuttle information between a processor, its memory, and other elements of a computer.
The suit, first filed in early 2007, was based on the broadly worded "291" patent. Legal action was also taken against AMD in a similar case.
OPTi reportedly dropped all of its original manufacturing and sales businesses in 2003 to concentrate on lawsuits.
Patent suits are often filed in the Eastern District of Texas for favorable rulings.
Apple had tried to counter the company's claims by arguing the patent was invalid through both prior art and the obviousness of the techniques involved. Judge Charles Everingham of the Marshall Court rejected those notions in his verdict.
The final outcome of the Apple case itself will play a role in the Companyâs strategy for pursuing its patent infringement claims and the Companyâs ability to realize licensing revenue from its Predictive Snoop patents will be significantly affected if the final outcome of the litigation is not successful," OPTi said in a press release issued Friday.
60 Comments
Ooof! Bad Apple.
simple google search shows that the inventors of this patent have similar patents going back to the 1990's so it sounds legit
Ooof! Bad Apple.
Hope they didn't spend that Pystar money all in one place....
Hope they didn't spend that Pystar money all in one place....
Hey you're back- where've you been? This place is getting taken over by the kook-aid clutch again.
OPTi reportedly dropped all of its original manufacturing and sales businesses in 2003 to concentrate on lawsuits.
This should be illegal under the patent system.
Even if they may have manufactured products using this technology before, doing the above makes them no different from a patent troll.
I'd love to see Apple appeal the verdict and at the same time, file a countersuit in a different jurisdiction to have the patent invalidated, if possible. The article itself says the patent is "broadly worded." Surely there is either prior art, or the patent is so broad such that it is impossible to make a noninfringing product.