It is no surprise that Apple is a frequent target for patent trolls. What is a surprise is that one patent troll has successfully sued Apple and they’ve managed to force the Cupertino-based company to pay them USD625.6 million for infringing four patents.
The patent troll in question is VirnetX, a company that has attack various other tech companies such as Microsoft and Cisco. The company has also sued Apple before back in 2010, with the initial lawsuit focusing on the alleged use of virtual private network (VPN) patents in FaceTime video chats. For that case, VirnetX did manage to win the initial court case and would have won USD368 million in damages as well as a running royalty of nearly one percent of iPhone and iPad revenue. Unfortunately for them, both the damages and royalty were overtuned on appeal.
In their current case against Apple, VirnetX accused Apple for infringing on four seperate patents by way of FaceTime and iMessage, which the jury for this case found that Apple is guilty of. As such, the jury held that Apple should pay USD334.9 million for the security patent infringement. Apple was further ordered to pay an additional USD290.7 million for infringing other disputed patents.
Needless to say, Apple isn’t thrilled about this judgement and will be appealing this decision soon.
Source : Engadget, Ars Technica, Reuters
