We hear of so many frivolous and petty lawsuits against (and from) Apple, it’s a bit weird to see one actually connect like this. A serious technical suit filed in 2007 alleged that Apple willfully violated a patent owned by Opti Inc.
Apple attempted to convince the jury that the patent was invalid, but that apparently amounted to a confession once all the cards were down. The jury found Apple guilty and the company was handed a fine to the tune of $19 million and change. That’s not going to put a dent in their cash reserves, but I think we can all agree that anyone would rather keep the $19 mil rather than throw it away. Well, at least justice was served.
[image courtesy of Ars Technica]
If anyone knows more about this, I have a few questions:
1) How did Opti Inc. determine Apple was doing this? Wouldn’t this require some level of inside knowledge on their design or is this kind of technological advance easy to determine with external tests like performance?
2) Is there any study into the psychology of the jury members in cases like this where you have a large company fighting a smaller one? As in, it’s easier to find Apple guilty and have to pay $19 million than it is to convince yourself that the small company is wrong and there is no case at all. I could be entirely wrong on this too, it’s just my perspective.
1. reverse engineered the products in question, OR, apple opened their mouth about how they did something.
2. if you violated a clearly documented patent, IE I patent the frying pan, you build one that works exactly like mine, even though yours is steel and mine was iron, I patented the concept, and physical design, you are still violating my right to license the technology for profit. It does not take a grudge of the little guy VS. corporate America to figure that one out.
Glad to see Apple get its wrist slapped and as Jobs is a dick, you can bet someone is getting fired for it.
Maybe as you say, there is a psychological leaning towards the underdog. Here, Opti Inc. is clearly the underdog and Apple the snobbish, wrong-doer. As human beings, we want the underdog to win as there is a thrill in the underdog winning. (Maybe, because, deep down, we feel like the underdog in the large expanse of this world and it winning, is victory for us.) Though I’m not a psychologist to specify any terms for this tendency, this is clearly our stand in battles between top dogs and underdogs (unless the topdog is our favorite). This is why Susan Boyle’s victory made so much sense to us.
Wait a minute, no details?
WHAT were the patents that Apple infringed on?
According to tech.blorge.com,
“The three patents in question are US Patent No. 5,710,906, US Patent No. 5,813,036 and U.S. Patent No. 6,405,291, all etitled “Predictive Snooping of Cache Memory for Master-Initiated Accesses.”
The case was filed in U.S. District Court for the Eastern District of Texas, not surprisingly.
Man, they must really be overworked down there. All the possibly-shady tech and patent suits are filed there almost without exception.