According to a report out of Bloomberg, notorious patent troll VirnetX is seeking $532 million from Apple, claiming that Apple has taken its intellectual property without permission. VirnetX holds a variety of patents relating to technology used in creating Virtual Private Networks, or VPNs. The company claims that Apple’s own VPN technology, as well as its FaceTime and iMessage services, all infringe on its patents.
“Apple hasn’t played fair. They have taken Virnetx’s intellectual property without permission,” VirnetX lawyer Brad Caldwell stated to the jury in Texas today. VirnetX previously won a $368.2 million verdict against Apple, but an appeals court threw out that ruling and ordered a new trial. The company now seeks $532 million due to new generations of Apple products continuing to infringe on its patents.
“Apple believes in fairness and protecting intellectual property,” said Apple’s lawyer, Greg Arovas. “VirnetX keeps moving the boundary, asking for more and more and more.” VirnetX has struggled to commercialize its own products and generally relies on licensing agreements for its income, hence why it is so strongly going against Apple.
The trial is expected to continue through at least next week and will continue to see arguments from both sides. Apple was not able to make arguments concerning some of VirnetX’s claims as it already addressed them in the initial hearing. The company dropped other arguments, as well.
This isn’t the first time Apple has been the target of a patent troll. Last year, it was ordered to pay $532.9 million for infringing on gaming patents of SmartFlash LLC., who then came back again looking for more money, saying some products were released too late to be included in the initial trial. In 2014, Apple spoke out against patent trolls publicly, saying that it is the subject of more patent-related lawsuits than any other company.
VirnetX has been successful in the past when it comes to winning patent infringement cases, receiving more than $200 million over recent years.
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This is kind of a difficult area — the idea of a patent is to protect an idea … originally patents were set up to help protect the creators themselves who come up with the idea for an invention…
I feel those who obtain patents just for storage until a time comes when they can take another company to court are abusing the system…
I think a patent should only be allowed IF you have at least a working prototype to go with that patent, or have intent to build a working prototype within 5 years… otherwise that patent becomes void…
What these trolls are doing is holding back the tech industry – yes companies like apple should play by the rules and obtain the necessary rights or create their own patents BUT patent holders should also play by the rules and not hold back the industry for personal greed.
you would think that if they are going after Apple for such things, they would also go after all the other VPN companies and people like skype and google who have video chat stuff… they are all fairly similar…
darn trolls…lol
Thanks for your balanced and interesting comment. I completely concur. :-)
I like the idea of a 5 year time limit. I’d go a step farther. Make patents non transferable. They only belong to the inventor. Companies could not make a business collecting patent portfolios to use as weapons.
Patents are set up to drive innovation. If the inventor cannot earn money or at least recruit the money and time spent on developing the invention, then no one will invent anything because people will just copy the idea and make money from it.
Wrong. The system was set up as a bargain between inventors and society. Society agreed to protect your invention for a limited number of years, but in return disclosing the details of your invention had to be beneficial to society. Trivial and obvious “inventions” are not beneficial to society.
The big problem today is that 99% of “inventions” are trivial and obvious to anyone “skilled in the art” and should have never been granted protection in the first place.
If you really have a leg to stand on with your Patent, you shouldn’t have to take it to the East Texas Court!!!
Get a job!
Why Apple doesn’t buy these turds and then open source their patent portfolio, I’ll never know. $220Billion and counting…let’s start using it to cart away the sewage that has backed up in the industry. Environmentally-friendly, of course. Either buy them, or bury them legally. And let’s get on with innovation…because they’ve had their 15 minutes plus some.
A major and probably the most important part of innovation is the security aspect. Virnetx has the best and Apple wants to use it. OK just pay for it and stop trying to steal it. This is just wrong. Any company developing software or any other novel designs has to think twice about investing with unethical companies such as Apple ready and willing to rip it off.
Apple introduced Facetime in 2010, so now this company wants to sue – 6 years later? Too bad, you waited too long and it makes your lawsuit look like a greedy company just to get money from a successful company.
Can someone tell me *what* exactly this “patent troll” claims to have invented (or “own the intellectual property for”)? Is it something “substantial” such as a particular way to encode and order video packets from one end to the other to allow for proper reconstruction of the video even if the packets arrive out of order due to latencies in the VPN network? Or is it something “trivial” like the idea of end-to-end encryption itself (basically “I talk, I write it in code, I give it to you, you decode” – updated for the digital age. Or do they somehow thing they can patent the *idea of transmitting video at all*? (If so, why haven’t they sued every single live-television anchor-person on Earth?)
You do not know what a patent troll is if you believe Virnetx is one so please stop using this derogatory reference to this company. Virnetx is a developer of technology for security and holds many of their own developed patents and are experts in the security arena as being proven by Apple’s use of it designs without any alternatives of their own. Therefore, they must pay for its use.