Posted on 05/26/2016 12:39:43 PM PDT by Swordmaker
Infamous patent troll VirnetX has formally asked a Texas court this week to order Apple to stop providing its FaceTime and iMessage features to customers. The request follows VirnetX’s victory in court earlier this year to the tune of $625 million, which the firm wants to see increased by $190 million or more, Law360 reports:
At a post-trial hearing Wednesday, Texas technology company VirnetX argued that although an injunction blocking Apple’s popular video chatting and messaging features, along with a virtual private network on demand feature, may seem like a harsh remedy, it is necessary because of the irreparable harm Apple’s infringement caused the company. VirnetX also asked the court to increase the jury’s damages award by at least $190 million, arguing that Apple has been the “poster child” for unreasonable litigation tactics.
The patent fight between Apple and VirnetX over FaceTime and iMessage dates back to a 2012 ruling when Apple was ordered to pay $368.2 million in damages. That ruling was eventually thrown out, however, and a retrial followed earlier this year in which VirnetX requested $523 million in damages after Apple continued offering FaceTime and iMessage.
While VirnetX is now asking the court to block FaceTime and iMessage entirely and asking for even more money in damages, Apple is seeking a mistrial and an end to ongoing royalties:
Meanwhile, Apple argued that in light of U.S. Patent and Trademark Office decisions rejecting the four patents-in-suit, an injunction would be inappropriate, as would any ongoing royalty based on FaceTime, iMessage and virtual private network on demand features. The tech giant also sought a mistrial based on a purportedly inappropriate argument to the jury and argued that the company is entitled to a judgment of noninfringement, despite the jury verdict, based on VirnetX’s allegedly insufficient evidence.
VirnetX has similarly sought financial reward from other tech companies including Microsoft, which it reached a $200 million agreement with over the same complaint. VirnetX acquired the patent that it has based its complaint on in 2007 after it was originally filed in the late 90s. As ever, we’ll continue tracking the patent litigation, but I have a feeling Apple isn’t letting FaceTime or iMessage go away anytime soon. Apple’s video and messaging services between its devices have become even more crucial during the debate on privacy and surveillance in recent years.
That case was adjudicated in 2012 and has already been RETRIED for a larger amount. The judge already ruled in the TWO cases that it was not willful. Where have you been? You claim to know everything there is to know about it but you don't know that?
You can't seem to help yourself from insulting anyone and everyone who disagrees at all with you, can you? Didn't your mother tell you that is not a good way to win friends and influence people?
Let's have you back up your calumny with some examples and facts instead of you just spewing innuendo. Show us the "tiny victims" of Apple that went bankrupt in the middle of litigation over patent infringement. Common, put up or shut up.
This is the standard practice of you anti-Apple liars. Make a general specious claim you cannot support and then refuse to back it up.
You DO have a problem with reading comprehension. That 2012 case does not vindicate Apple. That piece of paper and the $368 million judgement were vacated. None of us commenting on this case have ever tried to claim such a thing. You are making that claim up out of whole cloth to denigrate all the people who disagree with you. YOU ARE DELUSIONAL!
What vindicates Apple is the US Patent Office INVALIDATING the patents while Apple was still appealing the decision; the invalidity said patents is one of the strongest arguments that Apple made during that trial, claiming that the patent claims were so broad they should never have been granted in the first place, which is exactly what the USPTO found when they invalidated all four of them as well as finding they were obvious developments to any one familiar with the art. All four of the patents in suit even state in their background statements that:
"A tremendous variety of methods have been proposed and implemented to provide security and anonymity for communications over the Internet. The variety stems, in part, from the different needs of different Internet users."
They all go on to state that the current inventions describes another approach. Apple stated in the suit they were using and continue to use one of the other, but similar, approaches that does not infringe the in suit patents. There are literally hundreds of already patented systems.
Each of these patents ALSO state:
"GOVERNMENT CONTRACT RIGHTSThis invention was made with Government support under Contract No. 360000-1999-000000-QC-000-000 awarded by the Central Intelligence Agency. The Government has certain rights in the invention."
Any such development made under contract to the Federal government if it has any value becomes the property of the Federal government. How VirnetX can claim ownership of the rights to this technology is very questionable.
How much of this "infringement" payment from Apple does the CIA get? Who formed the two companies involved? Are the dummy companies for the NSA and CIA? Some have brought these questions up because of the strange connections and questionable transactions and huge contracts the original company had with both the CIA and NSA.
Not true. If I invent and patent a 'widget', and then you develop something on your own and sell it, that uses essentially the features claimed in my patent, you are infringing on my patent. This is the case, whether you used, or didn't use the information in my patent in your development.
Ok, now you finally admitted the jury is full of idiots, I am a designer / developer and I did enough of that type of software design before 2000 that I do not see how any of the specific features in the patent are useful or nonobvious. A "moving window of valid addresses" is not useful because it was and is impossible to reassign IPV4 addresses at the rate and quantity needed to make the window more than trivial size.
Basically the patents are a hodge podge of incoherent stuff that doesn't add up. Nobody can take it as a design spec and produce anything useful. The main claim, that the scheme prevents eavesdropping is completely bogus. A "seemingly random" scheme won't do that since the algorithm is known. A cryptographically random solution will, but that's not the solution they proposed.
The Cuozzo and Stryker decisions pending before SCOTUS should settle this soon.
Right now two different standards are being applied to patents. Broadest Reasonable Interpretation in the PTAB and Ordinary Claim Construction in the courts. An administrative agency, the PTAB, is claiming the power to overrule Article 3 decisions. So there’s conflicting standards and a power grab by an executive agency going on.
SCOTUS will assert its authority to retain jurisdiction over patent cases because it is in the Constitution. Congress, by statute, cannot alter or diminish the constitutional authority of the courts by turning that power over to an administrative agency, the PTAB. The PTAB is what Apple has been relying on.
The issue at hand is really more legal than the particular software design. Whether an administrative agency can overrule Article 3 court decisions, and about the use of differing standards by the courts and the PTAB. Congress opened a can of worms when they passed the America Invents Act.
With VirnetX v Apple it is also a matter of which case gets finalized first. If the PTAB gets finalized VirnetX is screwed, if the Eastern District case is finalized then Apple loses, at least for a minute. Apple’s deep pockets allow it to use the seemingly endless appeals and delays built into the system to its advantage. All of the big firms are using this strategy now.
You, sir, are wrong. The Copyright Clause in the US Constitution is quite short and leaves a lot for Congress to create:
"To promote the Progress of Science and useful Arts, by securing for limited Times to Authors and Inventors the exclusive Right to their respective Writings and Discoveries."
Congress has the power to create the instrument that controls the way patents and copyrights are issued and cancelled. The Constitution only requires that patents and copyrights EXIST, not how they are managed, which IS an Executive Department function, but under the aegis of Congress to establish the laws under which such copyrights and patents are handled by the Executive. That means the statutory law, and the regulations promulgated under it, which you claim has no power to affect patents is the controlling factor, not the courts.
I should have mentioned that the section at issue is Amendment VII rather than Article I Section 8. Amendment VII grants the courts their supremacy, it’s more about who gets to make the decisions rather than a patent issue per se. The Supremes struck down a similar agency encroaching on the court’s prerogative so it will be a surprise if they don’t slap down the PTAB as well. Although predicting court behavior is a risky business.
Well, then, you are right. However, Pelham, the Seventh Amendment is also quite simply stated, which I shall quote for you and also highlight a particular portion of it.
"In Suits at common law, where the value in controversy shall exceed twenty dollars, the right of trial by jury shall be preserved, and no fact tried by a jury, shall be otherwise re-examined in any Court of the United States, than according to the rules of the common law.
The Seventh Amendment is a protection of the People against barratry, the repeated bringing of the same suit that has already been adjudicated. It does not mean that a case cannot be appealed by the losing party until that party has exhausted his rights to be heard by an appellate court to revue the decision.
The situation is that if the "fact tried by a jury" relates to a patent, and it is determined by an Appellate court that the patent was in fact NOT PATENTABLE and should never have been granted, then that is something a court of appropriate jurisdiction can indeed under the rules of common law, INVALIDATE the finding of fact, because the premise under which the jury, indeed the whole premise under which the lawsuit was brought, was based on error on the part of a government agent.
In fact, in this very case, an appellate court, vacated part of the original jury's findings of fact and sent it back to the lower court for a second trial, with a different jury, on the amount of damages because they original jury had, according to the appellate court erred on the facts of damages. The judge allowed VirnetX to add additional claims to the new trial and to try them as well, impermissibly (in my opinion) adding those to the specific trial on damages ordered by the appellate court which was intended to ONLY readdress the overly broad $384 million award of the first trial, which resulted in compounding the error of the first jury of basing the supposed royalties of a minor component on a percentage of the sales price of the entire device rather than the value it added to the over all value, by using the SAME formula to calculate damages that caused the Appellate Court to vacate the original judgement. This trial judge has been reversed on the same issue several times before and doesn't seem to be getting the message.
What SCOTUS will be addressing is the PTAB ignoring or reversing an Article 3 court. They decided a similar case in 2011, Stern v Marshall, involving bankruptcy courts usurping power from Article 3 courts. SCOTUS is currently defending Article 3 courts. It’s a separation of powers issue.
I completely disagree that the Seventh Amendment grants any court "supremacy." The Bill of Rights is about the People's Rights, not any courts' supremacy. The Seventh Amendment is about protecting the people from being harassed by repeated suits. The courts are the creatures of Congress, not the other way around. Only the US Supreme Court is not.
“I completely disagree that the Seventh Amendment grants any court “supremacy.””
But I believe that you’ll find that SCOTUS does in the Stern v Marshall ruling. The bankruptcy courts were a creation of Congress and not Article 3 courts. The Supremes saw bankruptcy courts as usurping Constitutional authority granted only to Article 3 courts. In the decisions now before the court the PTAB is an agency acting in similar disregard to the rulings of Article 3 courts. If SCOTUS rules consistently with Stern v Marshall then PTAB review affecting Article 3 decisions should be curtailed. But then it’s risky to bet on what a court will do. The decision in a couple of these cases should be released soon.
The Halo/Stryker decision just released by SCOTUS could prove important to this case.
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