Apple has decided to pay $24.9 million to settle the prolonged lawsuit in regard to Siri's patent. A Dallas-based tech company, Dynamic Advances, filed the lawsuit in 2012, stating that Apple's Siri violated a patent licensed to it.
According to the lawsuit, the patent of what described as a "natural language interface using constrained intermediate dictionary of results" was the work of a professor with the Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute in New York, to which the patent is owned.
The patent was then licensed to Dynamic Advances in 2007, four years before Apple introduced Siri in 2011. Dynamic Advances filed the lawsuit one year before Siri was launched, and Rensselaer joined the suit in 2013.
Apple, however, has responded that it would settle and pay the amount of $24.9 million to Dynamic Advances. The Verge reports that around half of the money from the settlement would go to Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute after agreeing to a final figure with the company that gained the license. Another settlement would be needed between the patent owner and the license holder since Rensselaer has disagreed to the royalty rate.
Apple's decision to settle comes a month before the case would move up to trial. At first, the company will pay $5 million to Marathon Patent Group, Dynamic Advances' parent company. The payment will be made once the case is dropped. According to The Washington Post, Marathon Patent Group's subsidiaries have sued major tech companies ranging from Yahoo to Pinterest.
Under the settlement over the patent, Apple will be allowed to continue to use Siri and license Dynamic Advances' patent. That would insulate Apple from further lawsuits on the same patent for the next three years. After that, Dynamic Advances could offer to renew the license or risk another lawsuit.
9to5Mac reports that Siri's speech recognition engine was not developed by Apple itself. It was developed by a third party company, Nuance Communications, a company behind Dragon Dictate.
Apple has a long history of patent infringement cases. In February, its iMessage and FaceTime products were subject to a $625 million patent infringement lawsuit. The company has since then filed for a mistrial.
Apple has settled with a patent violation lawsuit filed by Dynamic Advances over its intelligent personal assistant Siri. Apple will pay $24.9 million to the Dynamic Advances, which hold the license to the patent described as "natural language interface using constrained intermediate dictionary of results." The amount will be divided to the research university that developed and owns the patent, Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute.
