Apple to pay $502m for FaceTime patent infringement

Licensing company VirnetX Holding Corp has been awarded $502.6 million by a jury after it found that Apple’s FaceTime infringed four communication technology patents.

Judgment was delivered at the US District Court for the Eastern District of Texas, Tyler Division, yesterday, April 10, as reported by Bloomberg.

VirnetX filed the patent infringement lawsuit in 2012, after also filing a related suit against Apple in 2010.

According to both complaints, Apple’s devices infringe four patents covering secure communications technology. Applications including FaceTime, VPN on Demand, and iMessage were targeted.

Apple denied the allegations of infringement.

In 2012 a jury at the same court awarded VirnetX $368.2 million in damages. The US Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit ordered a new trial in 2014, having found that the jury award was based on defective jury instructions.

Following another trial Apple was ordered to pay $625 million in February 2016, after the court opted to merge the two complaints against Apple into one suit. VirnetX had originally filed two separate complaints in 2010 and 2012 which focussed on older and newer versions of Apple’s technology.

Apple then filed a motion requesting a new trial. The company accused VirnetX’s counsel of trying to “confuse, mislead, and inflame” the jury.

Judge Robert Schroeder vacated the verdict and $625 million award in August 2016 and ruled that the dispute should be split into two separate trials to avoid jury confusion.

The first of the trials was concluded in October 2016. The jury found that Apple infringed two patents relating to internet security technology through its original FaceTime technology, and awarded $302.4 to VirnetX. The patents concerned in that trial were US patent numbers 7,418,504 and 7,921,211.

The second trial concluded yesterday after seven days, according to the court minutes. The jury took just under three hours to deliberate before awarding $502.6 million to VirnetX, having found that Apple infringed US patent numbers 6,502,135; 6,839,759; 7,188,180; and 7,490,151.