Two Indian engineers, alumnus of BITS Pilani, sued Apple and won

Two Indian engineers, Professor Gurindar Sohi and Terani Vijaykumar, were part of a team that won a huge case against technology giant Apple in the US this week. According to a report in the Wall Street Journal, the US federal jury ruled that Apple had illegally used technology which was patented by Sohi and Vijaykumar along with two others, when Apple was developing processors for its iPads and iPhones. The University of Wisconsin’s licensing arm, Wisconsin Alumni Research Foundation (WARF), had filed the lawsuit which included the two Indian engineers. According to the lawsuit, Apple had used their patented technology to ’enhance efficiency and performance’ of its signature products. The university sought around $862.4 million in damages from Apple according to court records, but the jury has still not passed a ruling on the money to be awarded. Sohi is the professor of computer science at the University of Wisconsin and led the lab in the school which helped develop a 1998 patent on improving efficiency in computer processors, according to the complainant WARF. “This work has been recognized as a major milestone in the field of computer microprocessor architecture/design,” said the complaint filed by WARF. According to Apple’s statements in the court documents, the patent was invalid and it did not infringe upon it. The WARF foundation first sued Apple in January 2014. Apple was sued again recently by the same group for infringing on more patents in their recent processors. This case is yet to be heard. The two engineers Sohi and Vijaykumar did their undergrads from the renowned Birla Institute of Technology (BITS) Pilani in Rajasthan, before moving to the US for graduate studies. Vijaykumar obtained his doctorate in computer science at the University of Wisconsin in 1997 and is now a professor of electrical and computer engineering at Purdue University in Indiana.