A Texas jury asks Apple to pay $ 503 million in a trial of a patent on VPN technology

Required by Apple Inc. To pay VirnetX Holding Corp $ 502.8 million, the jury’s latest verdict in a decade-long saga over patents for secure communications.

Tyler’s jury reached its verdict in about 90 minutes. He was asked to determine how much Apple owes VirnetX in on-demand VPN revenue, a feature that allows users to access VPNs. The Court of Appeal upheld a VPN offense finding on demand.

The companies have been involved in lawsuits for a decade. VirnetX, which said its inventions stemmed from the technology it developed for the CIA, argued that both VPN on Demand and Apple FaceTime features use its inventions.

VirnetX told a jury that she was entitled to over $ 700 million. Apple responded that it owed approximately $ 113 million, claiming that the royalty rate should be no more than 19 cents per unit. The jury settled at 84 cents per unit.

Apple and VirnetX representatives did not immediately respond to requests for comment on the ruling.

Apple previously paid VirnetX $ 454 million over a ruling over earlier versions of features. Apple launched a fierce campaign to revoke VirnetX patents, but its victories in the US Patent and Trademark Office were not timely to avoid its losses in district court.

This experiment included a different case with newer versions of On-Demand VPN. The trial was required after the appeals court dismissed part of the violation’s outcome, saying the company had redesigned the FaceTime feature to avoid the VirnetX patents, so the $ 503 million in damages awarded in the case had to be recalculated.

VirnetX, which has not been able to gain traction through its own Gabriel program, relies on patent ownership rights for its revenue. Before Apple, its largest payment came from a $ 200 million settlement with Microsoft Corp. In 2010.

As it searches for further substantial compensation from Apple, the company is fighting allegations that CEO Kendall Larsen’s family makes up one-fifth of the company’s 21 employees and that the company is “plagued by favoritism, waste and corporate failures,” according to a complaint pending in the Delaware Chancery Court.

VirnetX requested that the Chancery Court case be dismissed, saying that the “chain of fists” by the owner of five of the company’s shares is all public information that does not involve any self-dealing.