Dynamic Advances announced on Tuesday that Apple will pay it $24.9 million to settle a long-running lawsuit over a Siri-related patent the firm owns.
Under the terms of the agreement, the Marathon Patent Group — which controls Dynamic Advances — will be entitled to $5 million immediately after dropping its case with the U.S. District Court for the Northern District of New York, and the remaining $19.9 million after later conditions are met. In exchange, however, Apple will receive a patent license, and a promise that it won’t be sued again for the next three years.
Dynamic Advances says it expects to pay about half the gross proceeds out to New York state’s Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute. The patent in question was originally developed by an RPI professor, but was licensed exclusively to Dynamic Advances.
However, the Institute hasn’t yet agreed to any proposed royalty rate, so that issue “may have to be resolved in arbitration,” Dynamic Advances said, although the company claims that “will not deter the resolution” with Apple.
The lawsuit was filed back in October 2012, almost exactly a year after the iPhone 4S was introduced, which was the first iOS device to boast Siri, Apple’s virtual private assistant.
