Taiwan’s National Cheng Kung University has filed a suit against Apple in a US court claiming that Apple’s Siri speech recognition system infringes on two of its patents.
In a suit filed in the district court of eastern Texas, US the Taiwanese university alleged that Apple’s Siri voice recognition system has violated two of its patents and sought undisclosed sum in damages.
The alleged patent violation involves a speech recognition system and another technology which controls how the devices interact with a user’s voice command.
Siri voice recognition system is used in Apple’s latest iPhone and iPad models which allows users to make calls or perform other tasks through voice command.
National Cheng Kung University Technology Transfer and Business Incubation Center legal manager Yama Chen said,"We found in March that Siri’s voice recognition capabilities might have infringed on professor Wang Jhing-fa’s patent rights in the field."
Keeping in view of costly patent suit, the university has struck a deal with a US law firm to trim the legal cost.
As per the deal, the US legal firm will bear the legal bill if the University loses the patent suit, but in case the Taiwanese university wins, the US firm will take part of any payment.
The US firm will also take a share of any payment if university reached out-of-court settlement.
Wang Jhing-fa, a chair and professor at the NCKU’s Department of Electrical Engineering and two of his students–Lin Po-chuan and Wen Li-chang claimed to have secured patent in 2005 from the US Patent and Trademark Office for the "method and system for matching speech data".
The Taiwanese researchers also claimed to have been granted another patent in 2007 called "speech recognition" system.
Apple had settled a legal dispute over iPad trademark in China with Proview Technology paying $60m.
