Apple ordered by jury to pay VirnetX $626 million

A Texas jury has ruled that Apple must pay patent holder VirnetX $625.6 million, or approximately $565 million. The jury found that Apple was guilty of violating four different patents that VirnetX owns.

The form completed by the jury shows that the jury found Apple guilty of patent infringement in each of the disputed claims. The jury found $334.9 million to be paid for infringing the first two patents. For the other two patents, an amount of USD 290.7 million has been set.

According to VirnetX, Apple’s VPN on Demand, FaceTime, and iMessage features infringe its patents. It concerns patents 6,502,135, 7,490,151, 7,418,504 and 7,921,211, where the central theme is setting up secure communication and networks. The jury agreed with the patent troll on each of the claims included in the lawsuit.

In 2013, there was also a case between VirnetX and Apple. Then it was about the ‘Always’ feature that iOS devices had with their vpn functionality. With that function it was possible to automatically connect an iOS device to a VPN. Apple then decided to remove the feature from new devices, but not disable it on all iPhones and iPads sold.

VirnetX is a patent holder who gets all his income from holding patents. In 2012, a jury decided that Apple should pay VirnetX $368 million. The patent troll even wanted one percent of iPhone and iPad sales. On appeal, both the 368 million and the claim for one percent of the turnover were rejected.

VirnetX has won other cases in the past. A patent case with Microsoft netted the company $200 million in a settlement. Later, Microsoft paid the patent troll an additional $23 million to end VirnetX’s claims of Skype’s patent infringement.