Court Orders Apple to Pay More Than $500 Million to VirnetX

Apple guilty of infringing on patents.

If you’ve been following up with the latest Apple news, you probably know about the company’s lawsuit with VirnetX. The lawsuit in question goes back almost eight years now, and it concerns some patent infringements. To be more specific, Apple has recently been found guilty of infringing on patents related to secure communications. To be fair, VirnetX seems to be the type of company that makes a living out of filing patents and hoping that large companies would license them. They also sue companies for patent infringements, which sometimes yield promising payouts. In Apple‘s case, a Texas federal court just ordered it to pay $502 million to VirnetX.

What products are we talking about?

In 2010, VirnetX filed three lawsuits against Apple concerning its FaceTime, VPN on Demand and iMessage. Apparently, these features infringed on various patents. In 2016, the company was ordered to pay VirnetX $625.6 million, but this concerned two of these three patents. As a result, a judge invalidated the order a few months after based on a potential for juror confusion. In October 2017, it looked like Apple had to pay Virnex $440 million. The company appealed this decision. The most recent ruling might not be final as well, especially since The Patent Trial and Appeal Board ruled the patents in question invalid in 2016.

We’ll just have to wait and see how the situation unfolds further, and we’ll definitely keep you up to date as it develops.