IPA, which is part of Wi-LAN, got their hands on this patent from the folks who made Siri. They sued Vole in 2018, claiming that Vole was stepping on their patent toes with Cortana's voice tech.

Vole said, "Nah, we didn't copy anything, and your patent shouldn't even count." But the jury didn’t buy it and slapped Vole with a hefty bill.

Vole is not taking it lying down, though. They're all saying, "We're gonna appeal because we didn't do anything wrong."

The whole thing started with SRI International, who came up with the speech tech and then spun off Siri. Apple saw Siri and thought it was cool, so they bought it in 2010. But then, IPA swooped in and bought the patents from SRI in 2016.

IPA went on a suing spree, going after a bunch of tech companies. They even took on Amazon over Alexa, but Amazon won that round.