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Patent Troll VirnetX Wants To Ban FaceTime and iMessage, Increase Damages Award By $190M (9to5mac.com)

Posted by BeauHD on from the more-more-more dept.

An anonymous reader writes: Earlier this year, patent troll VirnetX won a court battle with Apple to the tune of $625 million. Now, the company wants to increase the damages award by $190 million. Law360 reports: "At a post-trial hearing Wednesday, Texas technology company VirnetX argued that although an injunction blocking Apple's popular video chatting and messaging features, along with a virtual private network on demand feature, may seem like a harsh remedy, it is necessary because of the irreparable harm Apple's infringement caused the company. VirnetX also asked the court to increase the jury's damages award by at least $190 million, arguing that Apple has been the 'poster child' for unreasonable litigation tactics." VirnetX also wants the court to block FaceTime and iMessage entirely. "Meanwhile, Apple argued that in light of U.S. Patent and Trademark Office decisions rejecting the four patents-in-suit, an injunction would be inappropriate, as would any ongoing royalty based on FaceTime, iMessage and virtual private network on demand features. The tech giant also sought a mistrial based on a purportedly inappropriate argument to the jury and argued that the company is entitled to a judgment of non infringement, despite the jury verdict, based on VirnetX's allegedly insufficient evidence," reports Law360.

44 of 94 comments (clear)

  1. Good Grief... by Frosty+Piss · · Score: 5, Insightful

    When are legitimate IP and patent holders going to band together and take out the courts in Texas? Sure, we all have different ideas about "Intellectual Property" and patents, but this has to stop. The courts in Texas are a money making enterprise that should be taken down with the RICO Act. It's a State of Texas sponsored SCAM. The "big players" like Apple and Microsoft (I know, I know...) need to "pony up" and kill this shit off.

    --
    If you want news from today, you have to come back tomorrow.
    1. Re:Good Grief... by Pseudonym · · Score: 1

      So the little guy that has a valid patent but has no business training, no capital to fund production or pay employees is SOL?

      The patents were bought from SAIC, so that's not relevant to this case.

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      sub f{($f)=@_;print"$f(q{$f});";}f(q{sub f{($f)=@_;print"$f(q{$f});";}f});
    2. Re: Good Grief... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1

      It's not a state of Texas issue as virtually all of these cases are lodged in the Eastern District of Texas, a federal court, where the judges are nominated by the President and confirmed by the Senate. The trolls establish domicile in Texas so they can claim in this court, which is seen as friendlier to patent trolls. Not sure what you mean by taking out a court, especially when the issue is the patent legislation in the first place.

    3. Re:Good Grief... by vlad30 · · Score: 1
      Actually I think the patent office has a lot to answer to.

      1. They took money on the application and processing fee.

      2.They claimed this was for due diligence to make sure you have the right to the patent

      They should be included in the law suit

      Additionally why do patent trolls pick this part of Texas? is the system a part of the local economy

      As for the little guy who has no business training, no capital to fund production or pay employees something like an angel investor can be found be smart your first idea will fund your next idea you just have to sell part of your product

      --
      Your'e all thinking it, I just said it for you
    4. Re:Good Grief... by DNS-and-BIND · · Score: 1

      It's a federal court, dumbass. The State of Texas has nothing to do with it and couldn't influence events if it tried.

      --
      Shutting down free speech with violence isn't fighting fascism. It IS fascism!
    5. Re:Good Grief... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Interesting

      The patents were bought from SAIC, so that's not relevant to this case.

      To rephrase that for the unacquainted:

      The patents were bought from the DIA by a CIA patent troll front.

      SAIC is one of the top 10 defense contractors. You remember Q from James Bond? His American counterpart is an employee of SAIC. This is all about encryption and decentralized chat: who gets to use them, and who does not get to use them. You do not get to use them. If you think this is just about patent trolling, you don't know the players.

    6. Re:Good Grief... by TechyImmigrant · · Score: 1

      As time has progressed, I've started to ponder if any patent is really "legimate".

      I've got a few good ones. We build them all and they go into real products. I wouldn't describe any of them as obvious.

      --
      I should use this sig to advertise my book ISBN-13 : 978-1501515132.
    7. Re:Good Grief... by Uberbah · · Score: 2, Insightful

      Apple's got a long history of buying legitimate patents and products fair and square.

      FTFY

      and using them to portray themselves as innovators

      Another Hateboi that needs to consult the dictionary on innovation and invention. They are different terms with different meanings - Apple didn't invent power cords that attach magnetically, but being the first company to put them on laptops was innovative.

    8. Re:Good Grief... by Pseudonym · · Score: 2

      I honestly hadn't thought of that, but this is an awesome conspiracy theory. The government can't technically outlaw strong encryption, so they just send a patent troll front against any company that tries to do it instead. I would read that book.

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      sub f{($f)=@_;print"$f(q{$f});";}f(q{sub f{($f)=@_;print"$f(q{$f});";}f});
    9. Re:Good Grief... by silentcoder · · Score: 1

      And if history is anything to go buy - there's a 90% chance at least 3 other people had those same ideas at the same time you did - they just didn't get patents, got there after you did, or didn't think they were as non-obvious as you think. Historically that's the case with just about any invention you can think off. Innovation is an unavoidable consequence of the state of human knowledge at any given time, once the knowledge exists for something to be invented, multiple people will independently have the same idea... every time.

      An example from my own career. Back in the early 2000s linux live CDs were quite popular for showing off the distro, they offered exceptional hardware detection and automatic configuration abilities. But Yggdrasil had been a live CD - the very first distro ever - so there was nothing new about the concept, it had just matured. On the other hand, installers were all still based entirely on package manager usage, and since CDs were so limited in space, you ended up where we were in 2005 - when the first version of Ubuntu shipped, it had two CDs in the package. One contained a live CD for testing, one was installable. The installer was text based and horribly slow and frequently failed to run well on a system where the live version had worked perfectly (simply because it lacked that awesome self-configuration capability).

      At this time I was working on an educational distro called OpenLab. One of the most popular live CD only distros (I've forgotten it's name, it was debian based and handed out at every conference at the time) had this huge long page of instructions you would need to follow to manually install it onto a hard drive instead and alter the config files so it could boot from there. I look at this... and realized that could be automated.

      So version 4 of OpenLab shipped as a live CD - with a program included which could automatically install it to hard drive, including graphical partitioning, mount point selection, boot loader setup etc. etc. etc.
      The first ever distro to ship with an installable live CD - and it broke records for the speed of install since the on-demand decompression was way faster than package managers. It still used a package manager AFTER installing. It was - in fact, the way every desktop distro is now installed - and with OL4 - I invented it (the main difference between today and then is that the installer was not launched from an icon on the desktop, to run it you logged out and and then logged in as root which fired up a dedicated installer environment - but in later versions I changed it to the icon on the desktop model without any code changes).

      Then about a month after OL4 was released, the latest version of PCLinuxOS came out... as an installable live CD. And they hadn't copied me, they had no idea I existed (after all - a niche-market distro from South Africa was not on their radar). Hell most of the people who reviewed OL4 didn't realize how radically different an approach to installation it was, they all assumed I had crammed packages into the CD as well which the root login installer did the old traditional way ! Hard to copy an idea when it was done so subtly that most people missed it.
      Thing is - the same lightbulb moment I had, that led to OL4 was also had by PCLOS devs, and quite possibly some others I don't know about. It wasn't long before every desktop distro was using the idea, some saw it from PLOS, some came up with their own code (quite possibly independently coming up with the idea), and at least a few used the OpenLab installer (it became the standard installer for just about any slackware based desktop distro for many years - the last one I know off was Blackwing64 which became obsolete when slackware got an official 64-bit version but there may very well be some of that original installer code still alive in some of the present day ones, nothing about the code made it hard to port so some may not even be slack-based).

      The point is - my greatest contribution to the open source and free software world...

      --
      Unicode killed the ASCII-art *
    10. Re: Good Grief... by JaredOfEuropa · · Score: 1

      Not sure what you mean by taking out a court

      Nuke from orbit?

      --
      If construction was anything like programming, an incorrectly fitted lock would bring down the entire building...
    11. Re:Good Grief... by arglebargle_xiv · · Score: 4, Interesting

      SAIC are pretty scummy. They found out at one point that they were using some of our GPL'd software in a proprietary product. We said "yeah, mistakes happen, make a small payment (a few $K) to support an open-source initiative and we'll carve out a license exemption for your use case, no big deal". They then spent probably about ten times as much with lawyers arguing that their interpretation of the GPL meant they could go ahead and use it without open-sourcing anything and without needing a license exemption. In the end we just dropped the matter, it wasn't worth the hassle.

    12. Re:Good Grief... by dwillden · · Score: 1

      It is in Texas but the courts in question are Federal Courts, not State courts. So Texas is not sponsoring any Scam. Why that circuit is so friendly to the trolls is a valid question. But it's not Texas that runs those courts.

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      I'm too lazy to compose a creative sig.
    13. Re:Good Grief... by Midnight+Thunder · · Score: 1

      There are cases where you fight companies in law courts and the others you fight them in the media, then again they may be so scummy that they don't get care how people view them?

      --
      Jumpstart the tartan drive.
    14. Re:Good Grief... by MachineShedFred · · Score: 1

      Public perception of a company only works when they have an actual product to sell. With patent trolls, the products are the lawsuits, and lawyers don't give two shits about public perception in the media.

      --
      Slashdot still doesnâ(TM)t support Unicode after it was added to the HTML standard in 1997.
    15. Re:Good Grief... by Zontar_Thing_From_Ve · · Score: 1

      When are legitimate IP and patent holders going to band together and take out the courts in Texas?

      The answer to this is, unfortunately, "never". Lawyers make up the majority of state and federal legislatures. Lawyers and judges don't think the system is broken. In fact, they think it's working quite well, thank you. My best friend is a lawyer and he's taught me a lot about the law. One of the things he has also taught me is that lawyers don't think anything in the legal system is broken or needs fixing anywhere. Their response to literally every issue is to just sue over it.

    16. Re:Good Grief... by MachineShedFred · · Score: 1

      They pick this particular court in Texas because the judges there have been shown to be more friendly towards the patent holder, regardless of if they hold a ridiculous patent or not. It's called venue shopping, and you better believe that every single company does it. Much like how there are shitloads of companies that are incorporated in Delaware, even though they probably don't have a single Delaware employee - corporate law in Delaware is far more friendly to the company than where they actually are.

      --
      Slashdot still doesnâ(TM)t support Unicode after it was added to the HTML standard in 1997.
    17. Re:Good Grief... by TechyImmigrant · · Score: 1

      >there's a 90% chance at least 3 other people had those same ideas at the same time you did

      Nope. Not a chance.

      --
      I should use this sig to advertise my book ISBN-13 : 978-1501515132.
    18. Re:Good Grief... by Holi · · Score: 1

      " In the end we just dropped the matter, it wasn't worth the hassle."

      So in the end you decided weakening GPL was the easier course of action? Way to go.

      --
      Sorry, teleporters just kill you and then make a copy. A perfect, soul-less copy.
    19. Re:Good Grief... by Holi · · Score: 1

      The problem is the PTO relies on the courts to weed out bad patents, and the courts just accept all patents as valid. No one is doing their jobs and that is what caused this mess.

      --
      Sorry, teleporters just kill you and then make a copy. A perfect, soul-less copy.
    20. Re:Good Grief... by Rob+Y. · · Score: 1

      It's one (sleazy) thing for a state like Delaware to decide to be a tax haven for corporations - and write their tax law to encourage corporations to 'locate' there.

      It's another thing for supposedly neutral judges in a jurisdiction to decide to interpret the law according to their personal beliefs - or to alter their personal beliefs - to generate legal traffic to their jurisdiction - if that's what you're saying is happening in East Texas.

      --
      Posted from my Android phone. Oh, I can change this? There, that's better...
    21. Re: Good Grief... by Anubis+IV · · Score: 1

      Spot on. I actually looked through the statistics back in 2013 or so after hearing so many people talk about the district. What I found was that aside from a one-year blip in the mid-2000s (which was entirely due to a particular judge who is no longer sitting), the Texas East District has never again been at the top spot of the rankings for federal districts that are friendliest to NPEs (non-practicing entities, i.e. patent trolls). As I recall, it was typically ranked #3 or #4 behind districts located in Florida, New York, and California, and usually ruled against NPEs at least 10% more of the time than those other districts. It was fairly close to the national average, in fact.

      The reason it gets so much attention is simply on account of the volume of cases it processes. As a result of that one-year blip, a lot of NPEs set up shop there, which naturally resulted in more cases landing there. Added onto that is the fact that its judges are now used to dealing with patent cases and their intricacies, so they push through far more every year than any other district, meaning that, simply as a matter of statistics, the number of cases that end up favoring NPEs outnumbers any other district, even though the percentage that favor NPEs is relatively close to the nationwide average.

    22. Re: Good Grief... by backslashdot · · Score: 1

      Uh it is the same issue. These unethical and evil trolls know the USPTO is understaffed and rubber stamps patents. They buy overbroad patents that should never have been issued and try to extort money. That's not ethical, sure as hell shouldn't be legal, and certainly doesn't advance the sciences. The US constitution states that the purpose and requirement of patent law is that it advances the sciences or arts.

    23. Re:Good Grief... by CannonballHead · · Score: 1

      why do I have to reboot at least once a day to keep wifi working?

      You must have an old router. ;)

    24. Re:Good Grief... by tnk1 · · Score: 1

      SAIC wants you to know that they don't care how reasonable you think you are, or how right you are, if you screw with them, you have better know what the fuck you are doing. They do not even want to set the precedent that they could be anything but right about their use of whatever they are using.

      Aside from how evil that sounds, the sad truth is that if these companies show any weakness, they become a target. That is how litigation works in this day and age. Someone with more resources who smells blood in the water with SAIC caving to a smaller player is going to become tempted to try and find that weakness. This is very much a mutually assured destruction world with patents. These companies need you to know that even challenging them is not an option because they are afraid that someone could get very lucky against them.

      People think of big corporations like they are some sort of giant malevolent entity. The thing is, they're more like blind, idiot gods who if you interrupt the music that lulls them in their complacency, they annihilate you, purely by reflex. In that company, somewhere, is a lawyer who heard a story about another lawyer who let the company admit fault on something that cost the company money. That lawyer was obliterated. Now all of their lawyers will refuse any possible situation where they could get fired.

      As someone recently told me, the difference between big companies and small companies is that in small companies, people come to work to try and make things happen so they can make a profit and succeed. In big companies, they come in to work and do everything they can to avoid being fired. This is why it is ultimately futile to work with big companies unless you really have something they want or you have the resources to defeat them in a straight fight. They don't respond to anything else.

    25. Re:Good Grief... by tnk1 · · Score: 1

      The GPL works like any other license. It give someone a tool to work with, but it is only as good as who is operating it. No one gives a jackhammer to a toddler and suggests that the failure to break up concrete with it means that the jackhammer was the part of the process which was deficient.

    26. Re:Good Grief... by tnk1 · · Score: 1

      I think they are merely suggesting that the Texas venue just happens to have judges who favor patent holders. In theory, new appointments could change that, but as judges hold terms that can be as long as lifetime appointments, a court packed with patent-holder friendly judges could persist for decades.

      I don't think there is actually the assertion that the judges are paid off, although that's not impossible in some cases. If it happened in such a famous jurisdiction, though, you'd think it would have attracted attention by now.

    27. Re:Good Grief... by Gr8Apes · · Score: 1

      Read the 4 patents, they're not much more than a description of the TOR router and standard internet components that were around in the 80s. I'd have to dig too deeply to dispute each one of those patents, but it seems obvious that they are broad generic idea patents without a shred of invention in them, giving the pre-existing and publicly available source code at the time. All 4 patents should be voided on the basis of pre-existing art.

      --
      The cesspool just got a check and balance.
  2. With a patent system like this... by MavEtJu · · Score: 1

    With a patent system like this, who needs terrorists to attack you?

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    bash$ :(){ :|:&};:
  3. Quick question by Okian+Warrior · · Score: 1

    When are legitimate IP and patent holders going to band together and take out the courts in Texas?

    Apropos of nothing, how does one go about "taking out" a federal court?

    Just curious...

    1. Re:Quick question by MachineShedFred · · Score: 1

      We are also curious and would love an answer.

      Sincerely,

      The FBI

      --
      Slashdot still doesnâ(TM)t support Unicode after it was added to the HTML standard in 1997.
    2. Re:Quick question by MachineShedFred · · Score: 1

      Except that Federal judges are basically on a lifetime appointment. Unless you can convince the US House of Representatives to have full-blown impeachment hearings, followed by having the US Senate convict them, the judge stays until they retire or die.

      There's a theory argued that the 'Good Behavior' clause in Article III of the US Constitution may permit removal by way of a writ of scire facias filed before a federal court, without resort to impeachment; but it's never been tried and you would have to fight that one all the way to the United States Supreme Court, with every judge along the way possibly deciding their own future fate.

      Good luck with that.

      --
      Slashdot still doesnâ(TM)t support Unicode after it was added to the HTML standard in 1997.
  4. Damages? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1

    I'm going to go out on a limb here and assume VirnetX is a pure patent troll and doesn't produce anything.

    So, how can they be damaged if they don't produce anything?

    1. Re:Damages? by MachineShedFred · · Score: 1

      Well, unfortunately, we have another case of Microsoft putting the screws to everyone else by licensing this bullshit. Now VirnetX can show damages due to lost licensing revenue.

      I'm absolutely sure that wasn't a strategic move on Microsoft's part, either; they've absolutely never done anything like that in the past.

      --
      Slashdot still doesnâ(TM)t support Unicode after it was added to the HTML standard in 1997.
  5. Re:Good by jerk · · Score: 1

    100% false. I've switched my SIM between my iPhone 6 and my Galaxy S5 and have no problems sending text messages to/from the Android device. When I put the SIM back into the iPhone, iMessage is re-enabled.

  6. Re:Go Ahead, Kill the iPhone by Dog-Cow · · Score: 1

    Name one patent Apple has sued over which they have never used in a product. Please refrain from breathing while you perform the search. Keep searching until you find one.

  7. Re:WWDTD by Chrisq · · Score: 1

    What would Donald Trump Do? It's a huge issue....

    All it needs is a minor change to his policy ... the wall has to be North of Texas

  8. Why can't courts punish both sides? by fey000 · · Score: 1

    Is there any outcome here where both parties get sent to jail? Cause that's the one I'm rooting for.

  9. And Replace it with what? by ripvlan · · Score: 1

    They want to shut down Apple's services. Fine - but what competing products did Apple shutout of the market that will now be able to bounce back and increase market share?

    If they desire to take away something - what is the replacement? If this is an NPE - they have no product. So Apple pays the patent tax - is granted a license - and we all move on.

    1. Re:And Replace it with what? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 2, Interesting

      They don't want to replace it.

      VirnetX works for the intelligence community. They don't like Apple's end-to-end encryption because it makes life harder for them.

      Originally, this patent dispute arose over encryption and decentralization: iChat/FaceTime, like Skype. made direct connections between computers, which cut out the middleman relay server which also cut out an easy logging point. Microsoft bought Skype and immediately eliminated direct connections; Apple continued to make direct connections until VirnetX sued them under a patent about direct connections. Now FaceTime calls are routed through an Apple server, which means that they can be more easily logged... but Apple flipped the intelligence community the middle finger by encrypting all the calls and by encrypting iMessage (at least the iMessage messages that aren't SMS).

      VirnetX now wants to shut down FaceTime and iMessage in retaliation. They're essentially using patents as an excuse to get an injunction against Apple for encrypting chat by default. The only replacement VirentX and its masters might want would be unencrypted chat and easily logged communications.

      Interestingly, VirnetX has little market cap -- $265M. If they could, I'm sure Apple would love to buy the company and all its patents in a very hostile takeover. That will never be allowed to happen, because VirnetX is a tool for people who won't let that happen.

  10. I'm really glad because... by coofercat · · Score: 3, Funny

    My VirnetX phone has literally been useless since Apple put Facetime on their phones. I haven't had a single video call since that day. I was gonna switch to an Apple or maybe an Android, but now I'm sure VirnetX will re-start development of an upgrade phone and I'll be back on easy streets once again.

  11. Re:Go Ahead, Kill the iPhone by MachineShedFred · · Score: 1

    Hmm yeah, Apple is always suing people over patents they hold and don't use in any products, and they venue shop for just the right judge in just the right Federal court.

    No wait, they sue over patents they hold that they are actively using in products they ship by the millions, where they show actual evidence of their competition using the patent in products that directly compete. And they file these lawsuits in the District Court for Northern California, which presides over Santa Clara County, where Apple is headquartered.

    --
    Slashdot still doesnâ(TM)t support Unicode after it was added to the HTML standard in 1997.
  12. Re: Good by MachineShedFred · · Score: 1

    https://www.google.com/webhp?s...

    The first Google-provided result shows how to do it if you still have your iPhone. The first search result is the god damn link the GP provided.

    I'm pretty sure people know how to use Google. This was an issue, YEARS ago, and has long been solved. Stop trolling.

    --
    Slashdot still doesnâ(TM)t support Unicode after it was added to the HTML standard in 1997.
  13. Re: Good by MachineShedFred · · Score: 1

    "pretty much the only way" excludes using Google for 20 seconds: https://www.google.com/webhp?s...

    Stop trolling.

    --
    Slashdot still doesnâ(TM)t support Unicode after it was added to the HTML standard in 1997.