“The court in Tyler, Texas has a history of ruling against Apple in suits like these. In 2012, a judge ordered the company to pay $368 million to VirnetX Inc. in a patent suit, Reuters reported, though a federal appeals court later ruled that the court had calculated the damages wrong and threw out that amount.”
The CAFC threw out the amount solely because they created in that order a new way to calculate damages. The case was remanded for a new trial on the level of damages and whether Facetime also was infringing. Apple was held to be infringing on VHC’s patent on VPN on demand. Apple is a thief, but it will eventually have to pay up. Apple will drag out these proceeding for years in hopes that whoever they are stealing intellectual property from will go bankrupt before they have to pay. By the way, many people believe the new jury award will be higher than the original $368 million because VHC’s patents have be found not to be invalid, Apple is willfully infringing and the attempt by Apple to do a workaround cost them more than $20 million per month and provided degraded service.
The award amount may still be in dispute..but they also agreed with the lower court that the Virnetx patents are NOT invalid and that Apple IS guilty of infringement.