Intel Corporation (NDAQ: INTC) had a lawsuit filed against it last week alleging patent infringement in the production of the Core 2 Duo microprocessor. The suit was brought by the Wisconsin Alumni Research Foundation, commonly called WARF, which is the private, non-profit organization that coordinates the University of Wisconsin-Madison's patents.

The complaint says that the Core 2 Duo architecture infringes on WARF’s U.S. Patent "Table Based Data Speculation Circuit for Parallel Processing Computer." The patent was based on work done in 1998 by the University’s current head of computer sciences Professor Gurindar Sohir.

WARF’s head legal counsel, Michael Falk, says “The technology of the UW-Madison researchers has been widely recognized in the field of computer architecture as a pioneering invention…significantly enhances opportunities for instruction level parallelism in modern processors, thereby increasing their execution speed.” Intel's Core 2 Duo processor allegedly take advantage of these improvements which allows them to increase performance by 40% while decreasing power consumption.

Falk also claims that Intel was repeatedly contacted as far back as 2001 regarding the opportunity to license the technology but failed to do so. Intel has yet to formally respond to the lawsuit, with a spokesperson for the company only saying that "We dispute their claims and we certainly intend to conduct a vigorous defense.”

Intel is no stranger to such patent infringement suits. In fact, this last October the company settled similar dispute with Transmeta Corp. (NASDAQ: TMTA) over processor technologies in the Core and Pentium lines.

Intel ultimately agreed to pay $250 million to the company. WARF is seeking unspecified damages plus associated costs of the suit. Though Intel certainly seems to plan on putting up a fight, WARF is no amateur when it comes to defending its patents. The organization has obtained over 1,820 patents since its inception and manages more 1,500 licensing agreements worldwide. If history is any guide, it seems likely Intel will eventually pay-up, the only question is, for how much?

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