Apple May Have to Pay More Than Billion Dollars in Royalties to VirnetX

The US federal judge who is considering VirnetX’s latest patent lawsuit against Apple has rejected a request for a new trial. Apple has yet to pay $502.8 million in royalties to VirnetX. Apple claims that the total of royalties and interest that would go to VirnetX will exceed a billion dollars.

The jury in the case reached that verdict in October of 2020, but Apple protested. It wanted to either have the lawsuit redone or lower the amount the jury came up with. The judge does not agree with both requests. Also the comment that the jury should have been informed about the ‘unpatentable’ of the patents of VirnetX, does not benefit the judge, it turned out on Friday. That writes Reuters.

Apple itself claims that the sum of the payments it must make to VirnetX after this ruling, amount to 1.116 billion dollars. Of that, $454 million comes from a lawsuit against VirnetX that expired in March of 2020. If you add the $502.8 million of this case, that comes out to about $957 million. The remaining $159 million would be interest. Apple can still appeal the case, but an attempt to take the case that ended in March to the Supreme Court failed at the time.

VirnetX and Apple have been engaged in a patent battle for nearly a decade. This case involves patented technology used in Apple’s VPN On Demand feature. The first case involved technologies that Apple uses with FaceTime. VirnetX is a patent holder who gets all his income from owning patents.