Apple has been ordered to pay patent troll VirnetX a whopping $625 million after losing a legal battle over the technology used for FaceTime and iMessage. The Cupertino company says it is “surprised and disappointed by the verdict,” and calls for patent reform.

Apple could owe up to $532 million for infringing on secure communication patents, used for both its FaceTime and its iMessage services — or at least it will if patent-holding entity VirnetX Holding Corporation has its way.

A lawyer for the firm told a court in (where else?) the Eastern District of Texas that, “Apple hasn’t played fair. They have taken Virnetx’s intellectual property without permission.”

It’s nearly Christmas: the time of mince pies, good cheer, and, apparently, settling patent disputes with the potential to cost you hundreds of millions of dollars each year.

With that in mind, Apple has agreed a patent licensing deal with Swedish telecom company Ericsson, ending a dispute in which Ericsson was accused by Apple of engaging in, “abusive licensing practices.”

Samsung agreed to finally pay Apple $548 million for the patent infringement case the iPhone-maker won way back in 2012, but it appears Samsung has had a change of heart and is now taking the fight to the U.S. Supreme Court.

The company filed a 219-page appeal to the Supreme Court today, claiming that the way U.S. courts handle patent lawsuits isn’t fair because juries aren’t given enough information on how to understand the patents. Samsung is also disputing the way patent damages are calculated, noting that if multiple firms sue a company for design patent issues, the company could have to pay multiple times the profit they actually made.

Apple today published an intriguing patent application with a unique method for waterproofing future devices — by covering ports, like those for USB or headphones, with self-healing seals.

Described as an, “electronic device with hidden connector,” the invention describes how self-healing elastomeric material could seal each of the ports, which would then be opened by puncturing them with external connectors, such as power or audio feeds, in the event that they needed to be used.

Following quite literally years of appeals and retrials, Samsung is finally paying Apple the $548,176,477 it owes for infringing on patents owned by the Cupertino company.

Four months before the fifth anniversary of the original complaint, Apple will receive the money from Samsung by December 14 — with Apple and Samsung filing a joint case management statement with the United States District Court for the Northern District of California, stating that Samsung, “has made arrangements to complete payment to Apple.”

Thanks to innovations like Apple Pay, Touch ID has become increasingly useful as of late. But Apple’s got another idea it’s been toying with also — in the form of a “panic mode,” which can be entered by unlocking your iPhone with a certain finger.

With its pro-privacy stance, Apple’s pretty good at treading the line between usefulness and creepiness, which other tech companies can struggle with.

A newly-published patent, however, may challenge that assertion — describing a method for monitoring another person’s location, via their iPhone, with constant user notifications sent to alert you of any changes in their progress along a route.

Presumably so you can hop in a chair, grab a white cat for your lap, and sit facing the door to greet their arrival with the line, “Mr. Bond, I’ve been expecting you.”

Apple may face $862 million in damages for allegedly infringing on a patent owned by the University of Wisconsin-Madison’s patent-licensing wing, the Wisconsin Alumni Research Foundation.

The Apple technologies that take advantage of said patent for increased processor efficiency? None other than the A7, A8 and A8X chips, which are found in the iPhone 5s, 6 and 6 Plus handsets, as well as several iPad models.

Uh-oh.

Swiping a finger across a smartphone screen to unlock it may soon become a universal gesture, even on devices not made by Apple, because Germany’s top civil court has decided Apple didn’t invent “slide to unlock.”