Apple has been embroiled in over a decade of lawsuits with one firm, and the most important case thus far has simply been axed by the U.S. Supreme Court docket.
As initially reported by CNBC, VirnetX’s bid to overturn a profitable attraction between Apple and VirnetX final yr won’t be heard. VirnetX initially received the $500 million+ lawsuit however the verdict was swiftly overturned in March 2023, the place VirnetX then instantly tried to attraction. After virtually a complete yr, it won’t be going forward.
That is all in relation to a VPN patent filed by VirnetX and subsequently allegedly infringed upon by Apple with iMessage and FaceTime. CNBC reported that VirnetX instructed the “Supreme Court docket that letting the rulings stand would incentivize the harassment of patent homeowners on the board.”
A historical past of fits
In 2020, The Verge, a serious tech outlet, referred to as VirnetX a “patent troll” implying it information patents purely to sit down on them and sue firms that infringe on them. This might be as a result of sheer quantity of filed patents or patents with imprecise terminology in order to encapsulate many use instances. These patent trials seem like the central means VirnetX has made its earnings since being based in 2005. In that very same article from The Verge, it says Virnet X is “a patent-assertion entity that makes cash by suing different firms.”
2010 was when VirnetX introduced the primary of its instances to trial with it profitable $23 million in 2014 from Microsoft for a patent infringed by Skype. In 2014, VirnetX initially received $368 million in damages for infringing copyrights from Apple, which was then bumped as much as $625.6 million by 2016, due to ongoing royalties. These concerned 4 central patents that VirnetX claims are being infringed.
A subsequent retrial additionally resulted in VirnetX’s favor however two of the patents have been deemed invalid in a follow-up trial, with the final two being overturned in March of final yr. After 14 years of trials, based mostly on a handful of various patents, Apple has lastly seen off this case.
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