OPTi wins patent suit

OPTi on Thursday won a patent infringement suit against Apple, including $19 million in damages. The patent involved "predictive snooping" of cache memory for transferring information between a CPU, memory and other components. The jury ruled that Apple willingly infringed on OPTi's patent. Apple attempted to bring doubt to the patent's validity, but the jury ruled the patent to be valid.

The case was heard at the United States District Court for the Eastern District of Texas, Marshall Division. The court and particular judge, T. John Ward, oversee a disproportionate number of patent suits, leading some to believe that plaintiffs expect favorable results from the local juries. While most districts show a fairly level number of suits, Texas Eastern spiked from 14 cases in 2003 to an estimated 236 in 2006.

OPTi filed a similar suit against AMD over the same patents, and in the same court as the Apple case. "The Apple lawsuit is a part of the Company’s strategy for pursuing its patent infringement claims relating to its Predictive Snooping technology," a statement read. The company appears to be ready to expand its legal actions to "realize licensing revenue from its Predictive Snoop patents."

OPTi eliminated all of its manufacturing, distribution and sales assets in 2003, and now appears to rely on licensing revenue and damages awarded from successful lawsuits.

by MacNN Staff