By Herman Lai, posted Jul 30, 2012 at 12:33 PM, 623 views,

Taiwan University Sues Apple’s Siri To Protect Local Companies From Harm

Taiwan’s National Cheng Kung University (NCKU) has filed a patent infringement suit against Apple in a U.S. court over Siri voice assistant, suggesting Siri has infringed two of the school’s U.S. patents. The school is also considering to take legal action against Google and Microsoft over smartphone voice recognition systems as well, saying Apple is just an “early step”. It would be startling moment if Apple, Microsoft and Google get sued simultaneously.

Filing a lawsuit on the court is costly, and to fight against Apple’s experienced lawyers aren’t something easy as well. NCKU told Reuters that they filed the lawsuit in the Texas court as it processes faster and its rulings are usually in favor of patent owners and the compensations are usually higher. The school did not disclosed the amount in damages it’s seeking from Apple, but said it will be based on Apple’s U.S. sales of devices that use Siri. Could Siri be ban in US?

Apart from seeking benefits from Apple, the school also claimed the legal action is part of an initiative to protect Taiwan’s local electronic firms from repeated patent infringement lawsuits that foreign rivals have filed. For instance, Taiwanese smartphone maker HTC is constantly having trouble to import its smartphones (such as HTC One X and Evo 4G LTE) to the US market due to patent battle with Apple.

After Proview won Apple in the iPad trademark dispute, a number of Chinese companies has taken Proview as a role model. At the moment, Apple is being sued by two Chinese companies over the Chinese name of Mac OS X “Snow Leopard” and the patent of Siri in China. NCKU is now the third entrant.

Source: Reuters, ComputerWorld