Apple pays OPTi $19 million in patent dispute
Apple has lost a patent infringement case brought against it by OPTi Inc. regarding the somewhat arcane inner workings of a PCI bus controller in certain circumstances.
The patent itself (number 6,405,291) and titled “Predictive Snooping of Cache Memory for Master-Initiated Accesses” was issued in 2002. It describes a method of efficiently transferring data among the CPU, memory, and other devices. The description states, in part, “When a PCI-bus controller receives a request from a PCI-bus master to transfer data with an address in secondary memory, the controller performs an initial inquire cycle and withholds TRDY# to the PCI-bus master until any write-back cycle completes.”
According to a report issued by OPTi, a jury from the United States District Court for the Eastern District of Texas ruled in the company’s favor in the following list of particulars:
In the matter of willful infringement, the jury ruled that Apple willfully infringed OPTi’s patent;
In the matter of Apple’s defense that OPTi’s patent was invalid due to obviousness, the jury ruled that OPTi’s patent was valid;
In the matter of Apple’s defense that the patent was invalid due to anticipation, the jury ruled that the OPTi’s patent was valid;
In the matter of damages, the jury awarded OPTi $19 million for Apple’s infringement of OPTi’s patent.
The OPTi report reads in part, “The Apple lawsuit is a part of the Company’s strategy for pursuing its patent infringement claims relating to its Predictive Snooping technology. Consequently, the outcome of the Apple case, and any subsequent appeal, will play a role in the Company’s strategy for pursuing its patent infringement claims and the Company’s ability to realize licensing revenue from its Predictive Snoop patents. There can be no assurance of the extent to which the outcome of these rulings will lead to positive results in the Apple case or the Company’s overall licensing strategy.”
This is not the only patent lawsuit that OPTi, Inc. has in motion at the current time, according to a Softpedia story. Apparently, the company is also involved in similar lawsuits against AMD, Broadcom, Silicon Storage, SMSC, VIA, and other companies computer industry manufacturers.
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April 28th, 2009
I think it is quite disgusting that some of these patents are made so ambiguously by companies with little or no intentions of using the contents of the patents. It seems that the vast majority of patents seem to be regarding intellectual ideology rather than intellectual property: more thoughts about what could be done than what a company actually does.
This type of lawsuit is coming up all the time and certainly it seems to me that we are in desperate need of a reform of the current patent system.