$24.9 Million Settlement Over Siri Technology

Computer technology giant, Apple, recently agreed to a $24.9 million settlement with New York engineering school, Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute (“RPI”), who claimed that one of its professors developed the technology that Apple uses in its personal assistant application, Siri. Plaintiffs in the suit include RPI, which employed Professor Cheng Hsu and his doctoral student, Veera Boonjing, and Dynamic Advances, a Dallas, Texas based company that purchased the technology from RPI in 2011.

Plaintiffs claim that Hsu and Boonjing developed the interactive information technology in RPI labs in 2000 and immediately sought to patent it; however, the patent was not granted until 2007. Apple began implementing Siri technology into iPhones in 2007. Apple argued that it bought the technology used for Siri from SRI International, a nonprofit research institute, which was founded by Stanford University. However, Professor Hsu maintained that Siri’s interactive information technology is based on research he conducted at RPI on artificial intelligence. 

Just two weeks before the suit was scheduled to go to trial, Apple settled with Plaintiffs for around $24.9 million. According to SEC filings, Dynamic Advances and RPI will each receive half of the settlement.

The case is: Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute v. Apple, 1:13-cv-633

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