Four years ago the company Apple Lossless Audio CODEC (ALAC), was sued by the representative of a polytechnic institute in the USA, who claims that the personal assistant Siri infringes an invention patent that was registered since 2007 to the educational institution.
Because they would have lost the lawsuit in court, those from Apple decided to pay the sum of 24.9 million dollars to those from Dynamic Advances, who licensed the patent from the polytechnic institute, if they withdraw the summons request before the lawsuit ends begins.
Those from Apple will pay 5 million dollars before the lawsuit is withdrawn, and another 19.9 million dollars after the lawsuit was withdrawn, and in the end the company from Cupertino will license the technology and will not be able to be sued again in the next 3 years.
Of this amount, 50% will go to the polytechnic institute that created the patented technology, but the interesting part is that this institute did not agree with the amount that Apple should pay based on this agreement, so it remains to be seen how much future does she have?
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.
The lawsuit was filed in 2012 and the first court hearings would begin next month, and Apple would have risked paying much more money as compensation, but if the institute does not agree to this agreement, Apple could anyway pay a higher amount.
