The U.S. Supreme Court has refused to hear a bid by the University of Wisconsin’s patent licensing arm to reinstate its legal victory against Apple in a fight over computer processor technology that the school claimed the company used without permission in certain iPhones and iPads, according to a Reuters report.
In early 2013, the Wisconsin Alumni Research Foundation (WARF) filed a lawsuit saying that Apple’s A7 processor infringed a university-developed patent that improves “the efficiency and performance of contemporary computer processors. The patent (number 5,781,752) is for a “table based data speculation circuit for a parallel processing computer.”
In October 2016, U.S. District Court Judge William M. Conley agreed with a jury’s finding that Apple infringed on six claims of a patent with its A7 and A8 system-on-chip designs. The judge dismissed Apple’s motions for judgment as a matter of law on liability, literal infringement claims and damages. The tech giant was hit with a $506 million judgement.
However, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit, a specialized patent court located in Washington, overturned the jury verdict in 2018, saying that based on the “plain and ordinary” meaning of the patent, Apple could not have infringed it.
WARF appealed to the Supreme Court, arguing that the Federal Circuit incorrectly ignored the jury’s understanding of the patent and its role in determining the facts of the case. However, today the Supreme Court justices, on the first day of their new term, declined to review the lower court’s 2018 decision, notes Reuters.
