Fed Circuit vacates VirnetX $503m patent win against Apple
The US Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit vacated a jury’s calculation that Apple award VirnetX $503 million in damages late last week.
On Friday, November 22, the Federal Circuit concluded that Apple didn’t infringe two patents involved in the long-running dispute, vacating the damages award and remanding the case to the US District Court for the Eastern District of Texas for a revised award or a new trial.
However, in a partial victory for IP licensing company VirnetX, the Federal Circuit affirmed a Texas jury’s finding that Apple’s iPhones infringed two other VirnetX patents relating to secure communications technology.
The court also concluded that Apple was barred from arguing that the VirnetX patents are invalid because Apple has already lost that argument in other cases against the IP licensing company.
Apple and VirnetX have been fighting over patents since 2010 when VirnetX alleged that Apple’s FaceTime and iMessage features infringed its patents.
Back in April 2018, a Texas jury calculated that $503 million was a reasonable royalty for Apple’s use and sale of VirnetX’s inventions.
Apple subsequently filed a motion for judgment as a matter of law, but the district court denied the motion and entered judgment for VirnetX.
Again, Apple appealed against the decision, this time to the Federal Circuit.
On finding that the district court erred on finding that Apple infringed two of the four patents, Circuit Judge Richard Taranto said: “Because no reasonable jury could find infringement under the correct construction, we hold that Apple is entitled to judgment as a matter of law of non-infringement as to those two patents.”
The court added that the jury’s verdict didn’t indicate which portions of the $503 million award were allocated to which patents.
“Those rulings raise the question of whether a new trial must or should be held because of the reduced basis of liability. We see no difficulty with limiting any such trial to damages, but there is a question whether a limited retrial need or should be held at all. We will not decide that question,” said Taranto.
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