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
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.