India-born graduates win patent case against Apple

New York - A total of $862.4 million in damages is what Apple could be paying for illegally using the patent technology and without and prior concern from the owners.

Two of the Birla Institute of Technology and Science, Pilani, Rajasthan alumni engineers have won a case against Apple for patent infringement.
The court this Tuesday ruled that the Apple used a patent technology developed by Gurindar Sohi, Terani Vijaykumar and two more engineers for manufacturing the chips in the iPad and iPhone, the pc-tablet.co.in website reported.
The lawsuit brought up by the Wisconsin Alumni Research Foundation mentioned the names of these two engineers while filing a lawsuit against the Apple. The Cupertino giant has now been charged with an amount nearing one billion dollars for the damages caused by the copyright infringement.
A total of $862.4 million in damages is what Apple could be paying for illegally using the patent technology and without and prior concern from the owners.
Gurindar Sohi and Terani Vijaykumar as per the obtained reports first completed their graduation from the BITS, Pilani, RJ and then went US for the post-graduate research and studies. It is a very commonly followed path for the engineering students from the Indian Institute of Technology and or BITS institutes to go abroad and pursue further studies.
The milestone technology of the computer science realm was first developed by the Sohi, a professor of computer science at the University of Wisconsin-Madison in the year 1988. The technology is mostly being used by the Cupertino giant for improving processor's efficiency.
On the other hand, Vijaykumar did his doctorate in computer science at the University of Wisconsin and is now a professor at the Purdue University, Indiana.
The University of Wisconsin-Madison's patent licensing body will not be able to extract triple damages from Apple as a jury weighs how much the iPhone maker must pay for using its microchip technology without permission, a US judge ruled on Thursday, adds Reuters.
On Tuesday, a federal jury in Madison, Wisconsin said Apple Inc infringed a Wisconsin Alumni Research Foundation (WARF) patent which helps improve the performance of computer processors. The foundation is claiming approximately $400 million in damages.
With a verdict on damages was expected on Friday, US District Judge William Conley said in his ruling that WARF could not prove that Apple infringed its patent willfully. It is a welcome development for Apple, which no longer risks having the damage award increased by up to three times, which is allowed in federal law for recklessly infringing a patent.
Apple raised a reasonable defense in the case, Conley said, and WARF "has failed to show by clear and convincing evidence that Apple acted despite an objectively high likelihood that its actions constituted infringement of a valid patent."

• India