Apple on Wednesday was ordered by an East Texas jury to pay $625 million in damages to patent holding firm VirnetX, after being found guilty of willfully infringing on four patents held by VirnetX.
CNBC:
The award was more than the $532 million VirnetX had asked for going into the trial, which began on Jan. 25 in Tyler, Texas. The jury said Apple’s infringement was willful.
The patents covered by the damages relate to virtual private networking (VPN) protocols, which the jury decided Apple had infringed upon with its FaceTime and iMessages services, as well as the iOS devices that use those services.
The patent case dates back to 2010, when VirnetX filed a suit against Apple, the result of which was a jury finding that Apple did infringe on the patents in question, and awarding VirnetX $368 million in damages in 2012. That decision was thrown out in September 2014, when the damages were found to have been incorrectly calculated. That led to Wednesday’s verdict.
Apple filed papers with the court on Wednesday, asking U.S. District Judge Robert Schroeder for a mistrial, charging that the plaintiff’s attorneys had mislead and confused the jury during closing arguments. Schroeder hasn’t yet made a ruling on that request.
