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Apple today settled a long-running lawsuit with Dynamic Advances and Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute over accusations Apple's Siri voice-based personal assistant violated a 2007 patent owned by Rensselaer and licensed exclusively to Dallas company Dynamic Advances, reports the Albany Business Review.
Apple will pay a total of $24.9 million to Dynamic Advances' parent company Marathon Patent Group. $5 million will be paid after the lawsuit is dropped with the rest of the money to follow later. Apple will be granted a patent license to use the technology and under the terms of the settlement, will not be sued again for a three-year period.
Dynamic Advances will pay approximately 50 percent of the money received from Apple to Rensselaer, but Rensselaer has not agreed to the royalty rate proposed in the settlement.
Dynamic Advances expects to pay 50 percent of that money to Rensselaer, legal counsel and the predecessor exclusive licensee of the patents in suit, according to regulatory filings.
Rensselaer has not, however, agreed to the royalty rate proposed in the settlement, according to a document filed by Marathon Patent Group
Had the case not been settled out of court, it would have gone to trial next month. The lawsuit dates back to 2012 and covers U.S. patent No. 7177798 B2, "Natural language interface using constrained intermediate dictionary of results."
Top Rated Comments
(View all)Software patents need to be rewritten to be a max of 7 years and only 3 years without a marketed product. This stuff is just ridiculous and a drag. Copyrights are the right way to handle code, not patents.
Why should an inventor have patent rights taken away if they fail to market a product within 3 years? What if the idea is really ahead of its time and the market isn't there for it for 10 years or 15 years?Also, copyrights aren't for functional ideas, they are for artistic expression. Further, they last much much much longer than patents do.
I think this means Apple licensed the patent for a term of 3 years. After the 3 year term expires, they either have to renegotiate another license or design around the patent so that their product no longer infringes.Um... what? Can someone [with knowledge of this] please explain?
While everyone has this mind set about Apple they are CONSTANTLY paying out millions eventually they will feel it.
And they are constantly making BILLIONS in profits. As a percentage of their profits, this is just a minor cost of doing business. So why would they ever feel it?Before anyone says anything, I'd like you to remind you that Apple paying $25M for a lawsuit is like me paying a $40 fine for bad parking.
So what you're saying is you have a net worth of about $880,000.You mean Apple stole Siri? Wow! They are just like the government.
Actually Apple BOUGHT the company that invented Siri