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Apple Must Pay Patent Troll More Than $500 Million In iMessage Case (bloomberg.com)
A federal court in Texas today has ordered Apple to pay $502.6 million to a patent troll called VirnetX, the latest twist in a dispute now in its eighth year. "VirnetX claimed that Apple's FaceTime, VPN on Demand and iMessage features infringe four patents related to secure communications, claims that Apple denied," reports Bloomberg. From the report: The dispute has bounced between the district court, patent office and Federal Circuit since 2010. There have been multiple trials, most recently one involving earlier versions of the Apple devices. A jury in that case awarded $302 million that a judge later increased to $439.7 million. Kendall Larsen, CEO of VirnetX, said the damages, which were based on sales of more than 400 million Apple devices, were "fair." "The evidence was clear," Larsen said after the verdict was announced. "Tell the truth and you don't have to worry about anything." For VirnetX, the jury verdict in its favor could be a short-lived victory. The Patent Trial and Appeal Board has said the patents are invalid, in cases that are currently before the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit in Washington. The Federal Circuit, which handles all patent appeals, declined to put this trial on hold, saying it was so far along that a verdict would come before a final validity decision.
It's a strange quirk in the process that even though the patents have been declared invalid the ruling stands, at least until the validity of the patent has been adjudicated fully.
It's the legal system doing out-of-order speculative branch execution for the court/legal system - with promises.
Marshal, TX literally would not exist if it wasn't for the corrupt courts there. The judges there will keep gorging at the trough that feeds them until it's taken away forcefully by the supreme court, at least that's the hope.
Good people do not need laws to tell them to act responsibly, while bad people will find a way around the laws-Plato
That's a good question. There are arguments both ways.
VirnetX WAS a research and development company that employed a lot of scientists and did good work. They z created* technology, they didn't mass produce and market it. Instead they did the research and licensed their patents to telecommunications companies and others.
Then somewhere along the line they realised they could *buy" parents cheaper than they could do the original research. They started licensing out patents that they bought, serving as a match-maker between researchers and companies that needed the technology. So far so good, in my opinion. We can see they got into the patent business, though.
Patent trolls frequently use "submarine patents", surprising companies *after* they have developed a product. That's not the case here. Apple engineers knew they were violating patents as they developed Apple's products. I don't know if Apple discussed license terms with VirnetX.
On the other hand, it seems these patents may not be valid after all. Patent trolls do frequently use questionable patents.
Sounds like they have a software product.
Do they really, though?
It seems so, you can download it here: https://www.myvirnetx.com/inde...'
It would be a damn shame if they were using some open source under a viral license other than the declared libav, libswscale and libswresample, or had failed to fully comply with the dependencies for those and someone sued them over it though, wouldn't it...