Apple Ordered to Pay $625 Million in VirnetX Patent Dispute
Apple was today found guilty of willfully infringing on four patents in an ongoing dispute with VirnetX and has been ordered to pay $625 million in damages, reports CNBC.
The patents in question relate to virtual private networking (VPN) protocols and in today's ruling, the jury decided that Apple's FaceTime and iMessages service, along with the iOS devices that support those services, infringe on VirnetX's intellectual property.
The patent dispute between Apple and VirnetX dates back to 2010, with a jury initially awarding VirnetX $368 million in 2012 after Apple was found guilty of infringing on VirnetX patents. That decision was thrown out in September of 2014 after the damages were found to have been incorrectly calculated, but a damages retrial that started last week led to the decision handed down this afternoon.
VirnetX originally requested $532 million in damages, an amount that grew to $625 million taking into account the willful infringement ruling.
Ahead of the jury's decision, CNBC says Apple filed a request asking U.S District Judge Robert Schroeder to declare a mistrial, accusing VirnetX of misleading and confusing the jury during its closing arguments. Schroeder has not yet made a ruling on the request.
Popular Stories
While the iPhone 18 Pro and iPhone 18 Pro Max are not expected to launch for another six months or so, there are already plenty of rumors about the devices.
It was initially reported that the iPhone 18 Pro models would have fully under-screen Face ID, with only a front camera visible in the top-left corner of the screen. However, the latest rumors indicate that only one Face ID component...
Apple has unveiled a whopping nine new products so far this March, including an iPhone 17e, iPad Air models with the M4 chip, MacBook Air models with the M5 chip, MacBook Pro models with M5 Pro and M5 Max chips, the all-new MacBook Neo, an updated Studio Display, a higher-end Studio Display XDR, AirPods Max 2, and now the Nike Powerbeats Pro 2.
iPhone 17e features the same overall design as...
iOS 26.4 isn't the major update with new Siri features that we hoped for, but there are some useful quality of life improvements, and a little bit of fun with an AI playlist generator and new emoji characters.
Playlist Playground - Apple Music has a Playlist Playground option that lets you generate playlists from text-based descriptions. You can include moods, feelings, activities, or...
