Apple agrees to settle Siri lawsuit for $24.9 million News
Apple agrees to settle Siri lawsuit for $24.9 million

[JURIST] Apple agreed on Tuesday to pay $24.9 million to Dynamic Advances and parent company Marathon Patent Group [corporate website] to settle a 2012 patent lawsuit [complaint, PDF] concerning Apple’s voice-controlled interface, Siri [corporate website]. Four years before Siri was released to the public, the New York Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute [official website] filed a patent [text] with Dynamic Advances for a “natural language interface using [a] constrained intermediate dictionary of results”. Apple avoided trial [Albany Business Review report] by agreeing to settle a month before the scheduled hearing date. Under the new agreement, Apple will be free of related lawsuits for three years and will be allowed to continue using Siri in commercial devices. Apple will pay $5 million to Marathon Patent Group upon dropping the case, and the remaining sum will be paid to Dynamic Advances. Though Rensselaer is expected to receive half of Dynamic Advances’ settlement amount, the institute has not yet agreed to the payment and may choose to settle the matter in arbitration.

Apple has been found in violation of numerous technology patents including several video streaming patents [JURIST report] belonging to the Kudeleski Group [official website], a Swiss security company. Last month the Dusseldorf District Court [official website] found that numerous Apple products violated Kudeleski patents and imposed a fine of €250,000 per violation. Though it is uncertain if Apple will be able to invalidate the patents in court, the company must still address a related patent lawsuit pending in the US.