Guess who is guilty of patent infringement now? Yes, the entity calling Samsung copybots and suing them for billions of dollars over petty disputes like sliding unlock screens and other infringements have been caught red-handed themselves after they used a Wisconsin-Madison University’s processor patents without permission. The tech giant will have to pay a whopping 234 million $ in damages to the Alumni Research Foundation of the university and already trolls have started to pour in. Two Indian engineering professors, Professor Gurindar Sohi and Terani Vijaykumar, who were involved in the making of this technology were at the forefront of this litigation and played an integral part in wrangling out this significant sum from the company.
In the lawsuit that followed this illegal usage of microchips in Apple’s iPads and iPhones, the University of Wisconsin sued for 400 million dollars as all the latest models of the phones and tablets from Apple were launched with the same chip developed by the university team. Since the poor university folks don’t have the kind of legal muscle like Apple, it was eventually settled for 166 million dollars less. But, kudos to the team as it got a fair compensation in the end and the researchers got a fair share each.
Here is the court document
Many times, engineers from universities develop a great product and these multi-billionaire giants swoop in and give them only pennies for what it is actually worth. This might just be the start of a great fightback from the smaller players of the game. Thank you Gurinder Sohi and Terani Vijaykumar!
