Madison: Its been reported in the Huffington Post India that Apple, the Phone company, that Steve Jobs made famous, may be facing a huge fine for infringing a patented technology by the University of Wisconsin, pioneered by Indian American science professor, Gurindar Sohi at the University. The patent, governs an innovation that improves efficiency of dual-core processors, and is at the heart of the iPhone 5s, 6 and 6 Plus. The work was based on work by led by Gurindar Sohi, at the University.
The fines could run up a bill of some 800 million dollars. A Wisconsin court found them guilty of infringing a patent by the University of Wisconsin-Madison (UM).
Court papers filed by the University single out Sohi’s contributions as saying:”This work has been recognized as a major milestone in the field of computer architecture and design. Indeed, Dr Sohi, as leader of the lab that developed the 752 patent, has been elected to the National Academy of Engineering based on his work in the field of computer architecture.”
The same patent was also at the heart of an earlier dispute that the university had with Intel, but, which was successfully settled out of court for an undisclosed sum.
Sohi is an alumni of the BITS-Pilani and John P. Morgridge Professor at the University of Wisconsin-Madison. He got his Ph.D in Electrical and Computer Engineering from the University of Illinois, and has been a faculty member at the University of Wisconsin-Madison since 1985.
According to the BBC, the university claimed in court papers that Apple ignored its offers to license the patent, which would mean paying a fee for its continued use. Therefore the university said Apple was willfully infringing the patent, something which, if the court agrees, could carry a heavier fine. The precise amount Apple may have to pay will be decided at a later stage in the court proceedings.
The IP in question, U.S. Patent No. 5,781,752 for a “Table based data speculation circuit for parallel processing computer,” was granted to a University of Wisconsin team led by Sohi in 1998. According to the original patent claims, the ‘752 patent focuses on improving power efficiency and overall performance in modern computer processor designs by utilizing “data speculation” circuit, also known as a branch predictor.
Sohi said in email to the Huffington Post, that he was unable to comment on these developments.
