Tech giant Apple Inc. is ordered by a federal jury in Texas last Friday to pay the sum of $302 million due to illegal usage of internet security technology patented by VirnetX Holding Corp in their features that includes FaceTime video conferencing app.
The decision is made at a new trial held in Tyler, Texas that had been ordered by Judge Robert Schroeder after he dismissed VirnetX's $625.6 million win on Apple since the previous trial's jurors may have been confused, according to Reuters.
Patents have been fought over by Apple and VirnetX for years now. In 2010, VirnetX, a patent licensor based in Las Vegas, has initialized the filing of suit in the Texas Eastern District federal court, accusing Apple of illegally using four patented technology on security networks, popularly known as VPN or virtual private networks as well as secure communication links.
In 2012, juries have awarded $368.2 million to charge damages, however, the Court of Appeals for Federal Circuit in Washington, D.C. partly reversed the decision, because according to them, there were anomalies with the ways on how the judge told the jurors the process of calculating damages.
Because of this, VirnetX two suits were integrated and few months ago, a jury returned to an even bigger charge, that is $625.6 million, one of the biggest rank ever decided in a patent case.
But Schroeder later discarded the results, with the reasons concerning jurors' confusion due to the repeated references on the earlier cases and he also said that they were unfair to Apple.
Apple spokesperson Rachel Tulley denied to comment on the issue. But court documents have proven that there is another court proceeding that will be faced by Apple on the matter of whether the patents were willfully trespassed and this case could even be of heavier weight, Business Insider reported.
Apple will as well face another lawsuit filed by the same company over versions of security features of Apple, including its iMessage app.
