A jury from the East Texas Federal District Court in Tyler, Texas has ordered Apple to pay more than $302 million in damages over an infringement on patent of Apple's FaceTime application. This is the third time Apple and VirnetX battled over patent infringement since 2010.
The first case of Apple against VirnetX in 2010 was thrown out by the U.S. Court of Appeals in Washington, D.C., saying the jury might have been confused about the calculation of damages that amounted to $368.2 million, according to Reuters report. VirnetX, a patent holding firm, won the judgement against Apple over four patent infringement but Apple argued that they did not infringe on the patents and the patent holding company did not establish enough evidence.
Earlier this year, a retrial over patent infringement case of VirnetX against Apple was thrown out again by the judge, Robert Schroeder, in Tyler, Texas that amounted to $625.6 million in damages with almost the same reason and found it unfair for Apple.
The third retrial happened and the jury ruled in favor of VirnetX over the infringement of Apple's FaceTime, VPN and iMessage. The jury has ordered Apple to pay $302.4 million to VirnetX Holding Corporation. The award in line cannot be claimed yet because the case is not yet over. It will now go the U.S. Court of Appeals in Washington, D.C., which has a history of ruling on patent cases, according to The Verge report.
VirnetX is a Nevada-based patent-licensing company founded by former engineers and executives from Science Application International Corporation (SAIC) which developed technologies on security for federal agencies. In 2011, VirnetX lost a patent trial against Cisco Systems Inc. over infringement on virtual private network inventions. In 2014, VirnetX won $24 million on a settlement with Microsoft over dispute on patents used in Skype.
