Copycats! Apple Pays University Reseach Foundation $234 Million for Patent Infringement

Apple has a huge bill to fork over to a university thanks to a copycat suit.

The tech giant owes $234 million in damages to University of Wisconsin-Madison's Wisconsin Alumni Research Foundation for a patent.

The WARF lawsuit claims Apple used their technology, which improved computer processing speeds. The U.S. Patent and Trademark Office issued a patent on this technology to the research foundation in 1998 on behalf of UW-Madison Computer Science Professor Gurindar Sohi and three graduate students - Andreas Moshovos, Scott Breach, Terani Vijaykumar.

Wisconsin Alumni Research Foundation filed the suit last year. After a two week trial, the jury ruled that the patented technology was in fact used in Apple's A7, A8 and A8X chips which are found in Apple products including the iPhone 6 Plus, iPhone 6 and iPhone 5s and various versions of the iPad.

Yikes!

"The University of Wisconsin has a long history of creative innovation across many fields," said Michael Falk of the WARF General Counsel in a statement released Friday. "WARF invests in patenting UW inventions for the benefit of the UW and the public. It is a serious matter for us to undertake litigation to protect the UW's patented inventions. It is important to faculty and to the UW that patented, innovative technologies developed on campus are protected from unauthorized use."

This is not the first patent case Apple has lost. In February, Apple was required to cash out over $500 million to Smartfish, a company holding patents that cover methods for selling digital music, games and other content. Smartfish co-founder Patrick Racz had attempted to launch a line of products in the late 1990s based on his ideas, but the business venture fell through so he filed for a patent in 2008, reports the Los Angeles Times.

Apple apparently infringed on three of those patents. As LA Times outlines, "Smartflash alleged that Racz discussed the data management technology in 2000 with Augustin Farrugia, who later became a senior director at Apple, according to Smartflash's complaint." A jury ruled Apple in fact infringed on Smartfish's property by using their patented technology in Apple's iTunes software and had to pay 532.9 million to the Texas based company.