Virnetx Loses Court Battle To Cisco Over VPN Patent

schneidafunk writes "VirnetX, a patent-licensing firm with 14 employees, has seen its stock price fall after it lost a major patent trial in Texas on Thursday. A jury there ruled that Cisco did not infringe VirnetX's patents on virtual private networks (VPNs), and that the networking giant didn't have to pay $258 million in damages."

Comments

Awwww....

[Dexter Herbivore]

Poor patent troll. I'd like to see more losses like this for these parasites.

Re:Awwww....

[Anonymous Coward]

In other western countries citizens expect the government to be proactive about preventing harmful actions. Americans expect that much less and instead the idea is that lawsuits after-the-fact play the role that governments play in other countries. That can only work if everyone is allowed to sue everyone else for any reason with no consequences other than legal fees. It's a bit like how you can't have the police jailed if they investigate someone innocent - being a policeman would be too risky in that case. In a sense, in the US, everyone is supposed to be police and lawsuits is how that is done. It's the same thing with how Americans want to carry guns so they can take out criminals. It is a part of their culture.

Re:Publically traded?

[Dexter Herbivore]

No doubt it'll be structured that way to avoid liability for whatever parent group owns them. A nice little sock puppet to take all the risk and pass any reward on to the limited shareholding.

Half the battle

[Anonymous Psychopath]

It's a good thing when companies with deep pockets stand up patent trolls and win, but I worry that they'll just move to smaller, softer targets who can't afford to fight. Even after widely-publicized losses like this we'll continue to suffer from patent trolls until we have some meaningful legal reforms.