WiLAN wins $85 million in Apple retrial
A jury has reduced the damages Apple owes to WiLAN to $85 million following a retrial at the US District Court for the Southern District of California.
The verdict, issued Friday, January 24, came as something of a reprieve for Apple, which was previously held liable for damages of $145 million for infringing two WiLAN patents.
The patents relate to voice over LTE technology, a wireless communication method used in numerous Apple iPhone models.
Last January, district judge Dana Sabraw gave WiLAN a choice of a retrial or reduced damages of just $10 million after Apple questioned the methodology behind the original $145 million figure.
Mike McKool, chairman of McKool Smith, led WiLAN’s legal team at the retrial.
“This was an important trial to determine the jury's award of damages for the infringement of WiLAN’s novel wireless patents,” McKool said.
“The jury worked hard to weigh the evidence in this case and our client is very pleased with the verdict,” he added.
Ontario-based WiLAN originally sued Apple for infringing the two patents in 2013. The California-based tech giant responded by effectively labelling WiLAN a patent troll, remarking at the time that the Canadian company’s business strategy “revolves around threatening to initiate litigation against technology companies to extract licensing fees”.
WiLAN had previously failed in a lawsuit against Apple over a separate patent, also filed in 2013. In that case, the US District Court for the Eastern District of Texas found that two claims of the WiLAN patent-in-suit were invalid.
The Ontario company also fell short in another patent infringement suit against Japan-based Sharp Electronics last February, with the court finding that WiLAN failed to produce admissible evidence.
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