“Apple lost a retrial a year ago in an ongoing patent dispute with VirnetX over secure communications protocols in FaceTime and other applications, and today the latter company announced the total amount Apple finally will be required to pay up, after the court that heard the case — United States District Court for the Eastern District of Texas — denied all of Apple’s motions filed in the wake of that decision, and affirmed VirnetX’s motions,” Ingrid Lunden reports for TechCrunch.
MacDailyNews Take: Rocket docket.
“According to Virnetx, total final judgement amount will now be $439.7 million, about $140 million higher than previously disclosed,” Lunden reports. “Apple has been in touch with us, and a spokesperson confirmed that it plans to appeal this final judgement. (The motions can still be appealed even if the original case was already appealed and lost.)”
“Similarly, there is another dispute that may sway how this case ultimately goes. Currently all four VirnetX patents in the suit have been invalidated by the Patent and Trademark Office, or its Patent Trial and Appeal Board, or both,” Lunden reports. “his, confusingly, doesn’t actually halt the pace of VirnetX’s patent case: the invalidation is not legally binding until all appeals have been exhausted (and separately that case appears to still be ongoing).”
Read more in the full article here.
MacDailyNews Take: Onward to the appeal in a real court of law!
SEE ALSO:
Apple loses patent retrial to VirnetX, owes $302.4 million – October 1, 2016
Judge voids VirnetX’s $625.6 million Apple verdict; VirnetX shares plunge – August 1, 2016
Patent troll VirnetX wants judge to block Apple’s FaceTime, iMessage services – May 26, 2016
Apple hit with $626 million damages in VirnetX patent case – February 3, 2016
VirnetX’s $368 million jury award against Apple tossed by appeals court – September 16, 2014
Apple to make changes to VPN behavior in iOS 6.1 as result of VirnetX judgement – April 5, 2013
Judge upholds $368 million patent suit verdict for VirnetX against Apple – February 27, 2013
Jury slaps Apple with $368.2 million fine over VirnetX patents – November 7, 2012
VirnetX awarded new security patent files new complaint against Apple – November 1, 2011
Amazing! Invalid patents can be worth hundreds of millions in the Eastern District of Texas. Who knew?!?
The normal laws of objective intelligence do not apply in Texas.
There have been some troubling reports out of the PTAB, with the director and several judges being removed after it had been proven that they had been attorneys representing the alleged infringers in the past. It has been established that almost 90% of the patent disputes brought before this body were found in favor of the defendant. Evidently, this is statistically highly irregular. I don’t pretend to know what is going on, but to simply assume that all of these cases are frivolous may be unwise. It will be interesting to see what happens next at the PTAB with a new slate of judges and a new director.