Patent Troll VirnetX Awarded $626M In Damages From Apple (arstechnica.com)

Tackhead writes: Having won a $200M judgement against Microsoft in 2010, lost a $258M appeal against Cisco in 2013, and having beaten Apple for $368M in 2012, only to see the verdict overturned in 2014, patent troll VirnetX is back in the news, having been awarded $626M in damages arising from the 2012 Facetime patent infringement case against Apple.

Comments

Re:Require that patents be defended

[greenfruitsalad]

instead of defend, it should be 'use'. unused patent just stifles innovation. you wanna keep it, use it.

Re:Require that patents be defended

[Tom]

Most patents on software are fundamentally wrong the way they are being issued.

A patent should be about your brilliant invention of how to do something, in detail, that nobody else could figure out. It should not be about what to do, without any details on the how.

The patent on the steam engine did not read "a machine that produces torque". Everyone could see that such a machine would be useful, the devil is in figuring out how to build it. But a lot of software (and design) patents are of the "a button that makes you do this cool thing" kind. They leave out the actual technical details, which is why they are so broad and abusable.