Not too long after winning a significant legal battle against Psystar, Apple recently found itself on the losing end of a $21.7 million judgment stemming from a patent dispute with OPTI relating to predictive caching technology.
Not too long after winning a significant legal battle against Psystar, Apple recently found itself on the losing end of a $21.7 million judgment stemming from a patent dispute with OPTI relating to predictive caching technology. The patent is titled, “Predictive snooping of cache memory for master-initiated accesses,” and describes a process that enables a computer to more efficiently maintain effective data transfers between the processor and the computer’s memory. Similar technology is used in Apple’s line of Mac computers, though Apple maintains that the implementation of predictive snooping is obvious and already referenced in prior patents – a fact, which if true, would render OPTI’s patent invalid.
Not surprisingly, OPTI decided to file their lawsuit in the Eastern District of Texas, a court system notorious for being particularly kind to patent trolls. Apple, though, is never one to back down from a legal engagement and has already appealed the unfavorable ruling.
It goes without saying that $21.7 million is a drop in the bucket for Apple, but given how frequently Apple finds itself on the receiving end lawsuits (both meritorious and frivolous), Apple has made a point to take on patent trolls head on, if only to send a message to potential litigants that extracting any judgment money from Apple won’t be an easy task. That’s not to say that OPTI are clearly trolling, but to highlight Apple’s strategy of not backing down from a legal battle when sometimes it may very well be easier to just settle and move on.
As a note of interest, OPTI has been around for almost 20 years and was initially structured as a chipset supplier, though heavy competition from Intel subsequently forced OPTI to sell off that portion of the company.
