Skip to main content

Patent troll on the rebound as Apple court-ordered to pay $302M in damages

apple patent retrial virtnetx facetime
Image used with permission by copyright holder
Apple received some bad news from its ensuing legal battles with VirtnetX, with the Cupertino, California-based company found guilty of patent infringement in a recent retrial, Bloomberg reports.

The retrial came to be from a judge overruling VirtnetX’s February victory against Apple. VirtnetX, a nonpracticing entity, brought its case against Apple, believing the latter violated several patents related to its virtual private networking technologies.

Recommended Videos

In that February decision, Apple was found guilty of patent infringement and ordered to pay almost $626 million in damages. However, a judge overruled the decision in August and ordered two separate retrials. The problem, according to the reversal, was that the original trial, which itself was a combination of two separate patent trials, blurred some lines and might have caused confusion among the jurors.

Please enable Javascript to view this content

As a result, the judge ordered two retrials, one of which was this recent decision against Apple. The verdict, handed down by Judge Robert Shroeder in the East Texas Federal District Court, gives VirtnetX a leg up on Apple as the two companies’ legal battles against each other continue to unfold and awarded the nonpracticing entity $302.4 million in damages.

According to court records, however, there will be another court proceeding as to whether Apple willfully violated VirtnetX’s patents, which means the latter might see more money head its way. Furthermore, keep in mind that there is a second retrial down the road, so things do not look extremely bright for Apple at the moment when it comes to VirtnetX.

That second retrial will concern Apple’s more recent security features, as well as iMessage, with the first retrial mainly concerning Apple’s FaceTime protocol. Digital Trends reached out to both Apple and VirtnetX for a comment on the matter and will update if there are responses.

Williams Pelegrin
Former Digital Trends Contributor
Williams is an avid New York Yankees fan, speaks Spanish, resides in Colorado, and has an affinity for Frosted Flakes. Send…
Is the Galaxy S25 Ultra zoom the best? I tested it and it’s close
The back of the Samsung Galaxy S25 Ultra.

The year was 2020, the month was February and Samsung had just kicked off yet another smartphone generation. The Galaxy S20 Ultra brought a lot of new features to the market, but crucially, Samsung’s marketing also made long zoom features and Ultra branding extremely desirable.

One of the key reasons to buy the Galaxy S20 Ultra — and subsequent Ultra phones from Samsung — was the camera. It featured a 108MP main sensor, a 12MP ultrawide camera, and a 48MP periscope telephoto camera that offered 4x optical zoom and 10x hybrid zoom. The latter also enabled the new 100X Space Zoom feature, which Samsung still promotes on its Ultra phones today.

Read more
Military & intel personnel location data sold by apps
Information Security with mouse cursor on screen for Social-Engineering LLC article - Pexels

Enabling location data on mobile devices provides many advantages for smart device users. However, this location information is a valuable asset that can be misused if it falls into the wrong hands. A recent media investigation uncovered some troubling findings for individuals worried about security.

The investigation, headed by Wired, 404 Media, Bayerischer Rundfunk (BR), and Netzpolitik.org, analyzed a free location data sample by Florida-based Datastream. From this information, the group was able to determine that the data contained information from American military and intelligence personnel overseas—including at German airbases believed to store U.S. nuclear weapons. Until recently, however, it wasn’t known where Datastream acquired this information.

Read more
WhatsApp’s upcoming translation tool is a boon for non-obvious reasons
WhatsApp app icon appearing on a phone.

WhatApp might soon automatically detect and translate your text messages. If Meta's recent AI work is anything to go by, voice and video translations shouldn't be too far off. On the surface, it might seem like a simple translation tool, but there's more to it than meets the eye.

Just over a year ago, I reported on an app by the Indian government that is used to record attendance and pay over 150 million daily wage workers, who make as little as three dollars per day. Amid problems such as a laggy UI, poor internet connection, and lack of digital literacy, language emerged as a massive barrier in my interviews with these workers, who often travel hundreds of miles to seek work.

Read more