Apple pays $25 million to resolve Siri lawsuit

Apple has settled a lawsuit with Dynamic Advances, a company that held the patent of technology that was used to create Siri, according to the Albany Business Review.

Dynamic Advances was awarded the patent in 2007, four years before Apple would debut Siri in its iPhone 4s.

Apple has agreed to pay $24.9 million (17 million) for violating the patent. Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute and Dynamic Advances will each benefit from this lawsuit, with at least 50 per cent of the money from the settlement being paid to Rensselaer.

The current terms of the settlement state that Dynamic Advances' parent company Marathon Patent Group will receive $5 million from Apple directly after the case. The subsequent $19.9 million are said to come after a few conditions are met.

The lawsuit has been underway since 2012, with Rensselaer, which conducted all of the initial research behind Siri's voice technology, joining the court case in 2013.

Next month the case was supposed to stand a trial at the U.S. District Court in the Northern District of New York.

Rensselaer however has not agreed to the royalty rate that is proposed in the agreement, as it states in a document filed by the Marathon Patent Group. The disagreement "may have to be resolved in arbitration," Rensselaer said.

The technology referred to in patent was created by Cheng Hsu and Veera Boonjing. Hsu was previously a professor at Rensselaer and Boonjing was a doctoral student when the patent was filed.

Rensselaer has declined to comment on the matter due to the pending litigation.