In October of 2015 a jury ruled that Apple had to pay the patent licensing arm of the University of Wisconsin-Madison $234 million for infringing a patent, even though the company denied any infringement and argued that the patent was invalid. And today a US District Judge added $272 million on top of that, ordering Apple to pay the Wisconsin Alumni Research Foundation (WARF) a whopping $506 million in total, for the same patent.
The judge says Apple owes WARF additional damages because it continued to infringe upon its patent until it expired in December 2016. Apple is going to appeal the ruling, according to court papers. The company hasn't commented on the matter however.
The patent that all of this is about relates to computer processor technology. Specifically, it describes a "predictor circuit", which improves processor performance by predicting what instructions the user will give the system. The patent was obtained by a University of Wisconsin computer science professor and three of his students in 1998.
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