Apple is a company that traditionally tends to be at the accusing end of a fight over patent infringement. Practically every Android manufacturer worth its salt has faced the Cupertino company’s (often misplaced) wrath over what the latter perceives to be imitation of its own tech. Not this time however. A Taiwanese university has just sued Apple Inc. over infringement of patents related to voice recognition technology – something that is better known as Siri in iOS.
The National Cheng Kung University from Taiwan has filed a patent infringement suit against Apple Inc. in the United States District Court for the Eastern District of Texas, Marshall Division over the latter’s Siri technology.
Siri has been a key driver of sales for Apple devices, and its galvanizing effect was most acutely noticeable in the iPhone 4S. The 4S was a smartphone which had generally incremental improvements over its predecessor, but was brought into international consciousness thanks to its USP of smart AI based speech recognition, that it dubbed ‘Siri’.
The National Cheng Kung University had apparently been granted US patents in 2007 and 2010 that encompassed key parts of voice to text technology. The current suit is essentially alleging that the 4S and the current third gen new iPad are infringing on its patents by implementing Siri.
The Taiwanese university’s legal manager had this to say: “We filed that lawsuit in the Texas court because it processes faster and its rulings are usually in favor of patent owners and the compensations are usually higher”. He wasn’t as forthright about the specifics of the compensation being sought though.
