Apple must pay $625 million for FaceTime & iMessage patent infringements

[eJoculate]

Sourced from the Verge: http://www.theverge.com/2016/2/4/10912250/apple-pay-patent-virnetx-facetime-imessage

 

Quote

Apple must pay $625.6 million to a patent holding firm, a US court has ruled, for infringing on a number of its intellectual properties. A jury ruled unanimously in favor of VirnetX — which reportedly only makes money through suing for patent violations — agreeing that Apple had infringed communications protocol patents in its FaceTime, VPN on Demand, and iMessage services, as well as in the devices that used them.

It seems Apple gotta pay the troll toll, in fact this is the second time they got sued from the same company.

 

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VirnetX has sued Apple for the use of these specific patents, after the company previously won a judgement of $368 million from the tech giant in 2012

[...]

Apple was forced to redesign FaceTime after the jury ruled in favor of VirnetX, but that verdict was later thrown out in 2014, when an appellate court stated the decision was "tainted." 

An interesting tidbit is both cases were in the same court

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Both cases were tried in the East Texas Federal District Court, a region notoriously friendly to patent owners.

 

The patent troll's previous victims also include Microsoft for $200 million and Skype for $23 million.

Somebody call the Newegg troll-hunter...


Edit: Here's some background info on the troll courtesy of arstechnica: 

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VirnetX's patents (1, 2, 3, 4) originated at a company called Science Applications International Corporation, or SAIC. VirnetX has been saying for years it has plans to market various products, but for the time being, its income comes from licensing patents. It has 14 employees and leases a small office suite in Zephyr Cove, Nevada, for $5,000 a month, according to its most recent yearly financial statement.

http://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2016/02/jury-apple-must-pay-626-million-to-patent-troll-virnetx/

Edited February 4, 2016 by eJoculate
added background info

[WaterproofBeanie]

Well... trolls hurt everybody.

[Dobbsjr]

That's nothing to them.

[ShadowCaptain]

sounds suspicious ..big cash backhanders to the judges?


Its definitely still a lot

minute ago, Dobbsjr said:

That's nothing to them.

[comicsansms]

VirnetX's Wikipedia article is just about their court cases https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/VirnetX

[Bouzoo]

I'm not sure the verdict would be that large of a sum if it was a troll firm. A quich search shows they own a bunch of patents, so they do know their job. If someone infringed them on purpose I don't see a problem. But with the history of their "conflicts", I have a feeling someone is gonna bite them really hard. 

[QFA350]

HAHAHAHAHAHA! Burn Apple Burn! (I love the looks I just hate ALL APPLE OS's)

[Guest]

While Apple may not deserve all the money it makes & keeps using loopholes, they don't deserve to loose money like this.

[Bittenfleax]

4 minutes ago, Warning said:

HAHAHAHAHAHA! Burn Apple Burn! (I love the looks I just hate ALL APPLE OS's)

Why? I like iOS. Well, I like their phone OS's

[ShadowCaptain]

4 minutes ago, Warning said:

HAHAHAHAHAHA! Burn Apple Burn! (I love the looks I just hate ALL APPLE OS's)

 

Wow thats extreme

 

Im hiding my apple products from you

[multifrag]

Apple has the money for it, but I would just hate to see that happening to a small start up. Just fucks people over... If you have the patent but don't produce any products you shouldn't have any rights for it.

[MonkeyFace]

16 hours ago, ShadowCaptain said:

sounds suspicious ..big cash backhanders to the judges?


Its definitely still a lot

I believe that's called a reach around  

[Belgarathian]

15 hours ago, Bittenfleax said:

Why? I like iOS. Well, I like their phone OS's

I'm a massive fan of OS X. Windows has closed the gap a lot with 10, but certainly when it was OS X vs XP, OS X was by far the better OS. Sadly it ran on Power PC and had no compatibility which was always the issue. 

 

iOS is great, but is missing some important features that Android has like T9 phone numbers.

[PerfectTemplar]

17 hours ago, Dobbsjr said:

That's nothing to them.

That's actually a lot to them. Just because they have 500+ Billion dollar value, does not mean half a billion dollars is something they're just happy to give away..

[Mathematical]

32 minutes ago, PerfectTemplar said:

That's actually a lot to them. Just because they have 500+ Billion dollar value, does not mean half a billion dollars is something they're just happy to give away..

But it isn't going to bankrupt them as it would many other large companies. They have 200 billion in cash reserves.

[Mathematical]

17 hours ago, Warning said:

HAHAHAHAHAHA! Burn Apple Burn! (I love the looks I just hate ALL APPLE OS's)

I prefer apple products. I do not know exactly why even though my pc products cost MORE. My apple products have never had issues with them, but my pc products do and usually die after 5-6 years.

[iamdarkyoshi]

Apple just sees it as a minor fee...

[PerfectTemplar]

10 minutes ago, Mathematical said:

But it isn't going to bankrupt them as it would many other large companies. They have 200 billion in cash reserves.

But that's not really the point. It would be ridiculous to bankrupt a company with so many employees because of a patent infringement, or under most circumstances anyway. $625 Million is a lot to Apple and I'm pretty sure they'd prefer to invest it into more R&D rather than pay stupid patent trolls.

[SImoHayha]

I wonder why the Patient Trolls even exist. 
 

If you don't own any machinery or anything else or uses said Patient. You cannot sue as your not using it therefore anyone can use it as your not using it for your own company. 

and if they try to sue common sense should come into play " Bitch your not even using anything, own a company or producing anything that follows patient, so get your sorry ass out of here and quit robbing companies out of millions of dollars due to your bullshit excuse and argument" 

[Albatross]

I wanted to say "HA-HA" but that's probably nothing to them. 

[Misanthrope]

So that's like 40 cents per average 50k year salary when it comes to them? Slap in the wrist.

[Trav_X]

If I had that kind of money I'd finally be able to get an InWin case.

[Bittenfleax]

7 hours ago, Belgarathian said:

I'm a massive fan of OS X. Windows has closed the gap a lot with 10, but certainly when it was OS X vs XP, OS X was by far the better OS. Sadly it ran on Power PC and had no compatibility which was always the issue. 

 

iOS is great, but is missing some important features that Android has like T9 phone numbers.

Ah, I cannot judge it as I have only used OS X a tiny bit. I guess it would be really good and reliable in the right application 

[MarcoR]

These are the guys who stopped Facetime from being open to all, and reduced the quality. 

 

No really, FaceTime once upon a time was geared to be open to any platform, and carry far better video quality. These patent trolls killed that, which is a real shame since Apple of all people were presenting a unified video chat solution for any platform. 

 

Facetime  is now platform locked and mediocre in quality. It's a shame. 

 

Patent trolls exist due due to a flaw in the system. It's a shame that someone who just buys vague patents and then sues despite not implementing said patents. That's not innovative at all

[Trixanity]

It should be possible to apply for a patent to become void after five or ten years if it isn't used whatsoever.

 

No direct lawsuits or anything. Just petition for a panel of some kind to review a patent and investigate how and if its in use. If a company is just sitting on their ass doing nothing, then the patent becomes public domain. 

Of course, it shouldn't be easy for a big company to bully their way to a patent with money and lawyers hence a panel of (hopefully) unbiased and objective people with no affiliations with companies. The panel should obviously also be filled with experts and not just people who graduated law school and have no idea what technology is.

And of course if a patent requires a lot of money to implement, then the patentholder should be able to prove that it is trying to raise funds to make use of the patent or do something to show that the patent is being used or trying to be used in the future when it becomes possible to do so.