Wisconsin: Gurinder Sohi and Terani Vijaykumar are names you probably won’t recognize. But they are David to Apple’s Goliath in a lawsuit that accuses the iPhone maker of illegally using their patented technology.
A jury in US recently found that Apple infringes upon a computer processor patent made by Sohi, Vijaykumar and two others in its iPhone 5S, iPhone 6, iPhone 6 Plus and iPad Air 2.
Sohi and Vijaykumar were part of a team of four engineers who created a “Table based data speculation circuit for parallel processing computer” that Apple eventually used to “enhance efficiency and performance” of its iPhone and iPad processors, according to the complaint. The lawsuit was filed by the Wisconsin Alumni Research Foundation (WARF), University of Wisconsin, where Sohi led the team of engineers.
Sohi was the lead engineer of the project, which was granted a patent in the US in 1998. He is currently a professor of computer sciences at the University of Wisconsin Madison, timesofindia.com reported.
Vijaykumar, on the other hand, is a professor of electrical and computer engineering at Purdue University. Both pursued their graduation at BITS, Pilani.
According to the complaint filed by WARF in the Wisconsin court, the patented work “has been recognized as a major milestone in the field of computer microprocessor architecture/design.” It improves the power efficiency and performance in processors with the help of a “data speculation circuit.”
The jury ruled that Apple infringed upon all of the six patents in WARF’s complaint and rejected Apple’s request to prove patent invalidity.
WARF had sued Apple for a sum of US$862.4 million, but the jury has not yet decided how much would be granted to the foundation and the team members.
WARF had sued Intel for the same patent in 2008 as well, but that case was reportedly settled out of court for an undisclosed sum of money.