Apple Ordered to Pay $19 Million in Rare Legal Defeat

By Evan Mix

Published on April 29, 2009

Apple, Inc., maker of personal computers and the popular iPhone, has been ordered to pay $19 million for willfully violating a patent held by OPTi, Inc. At the center of the case was a predictive cache technology that helps to transfer information between a computer's processor, memory, and other components. The case took more than two years to resolve.

OPTi, an integrated circuit manufacturer that abandoned manufacturing and sales of its products in 2003 in order to pursue multiple patent-related lawsuits, has sued processor manufacturer AMD for violations of the same patent. Apple's lawyers argued unsuccessfully that the patent in question is invalid due to the obviousness of the technology it covers and because similar technology was already in use at the time to patent was secured.

Apple's representatives declined to comment on the lawsuit. OPTi has stated that it hopes to negotiate a licensing deal to cover Apple's continued use of technology covered by the patent.

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