Apple reportedly warned a U.K. court that it might withdraw from the country if it must pay an enormous patent licensing fee. The iPhone-maker is being sued by Optis Cellular Technology over patents Apple says are invalid because they cover standard cellular-wireless technology.
Out of appeals, Apple cut a check to VirnetX for more than $454 million to end a lengthy patent infringement case.
VirnetX, which sued Apple over patents relating to FaceTime, iMessage and VPN technologies, announced the payment in a one-paragraph press release Friday.
Apple has been ordered by a California jury to pay $837.7 million in damages for breaching Wi-Fi technology patents owned by the California Institute of Technology.
Apple says it plans to appeal the verdict.
Apple won a round in court against VirnetX, a company often accused of being patent troll. An appeals court threw out $503 million award that the iPhone maker was ordered to pay in an earlier ruling.
However, the court didn’t reverse the original patent-infringement decision, just the amount of the award.
Just hours after an International Trade Commission judge ruled in favor of Qualcomm in a patent infringement lawsuit with Apple, the Commission as a whole made the iPhone maker the winner in a separate dispute between the pair of companies.
This is a demonstration of how much acrimony there is between these two, who were once close allies.
Some iPhone models could soon be blocked from coming into the U.S. after a judge recently ruled that Apple infringed on Qualcomm’s patents.
ITC Judge MaryJoan McNamara found that iPhone infringes on one of three patents in Qualcomm’s case against Apple. She subsequently said she will recommend an import ban on iPhones, but a panel of judges could still save Apple.
Apple is closing a pair of retail stores in east Texas, and opening a new one nearby to take on their traffic. But this has little to do with customer convenience; it’s likely all about patent lawsuits.
The move could easily save Apple millions of dollars.
An appeals court just reversed the 2015 decision against Apple made in a patent-infringement lawsuit brought by the University of Wisconsin-Madison.
The original court ruled that the iPhone-maker owed the university $234 million for infringing on patented microchip technology in the iPhone and iPad.
“Coopetition” best describes the relationship between Apple and Qualcomm. Wireless modems made by Qualcomm are used in iPhones even as the two companies are locked in a years-long patent dispute over billions of dollars.
The fight reached a new phase today as Apple challenged four Qualcomm patents, arguing they shouldn’t have been awarded in the first place.
Last month, a jury ordered Samsung to pay Apple $539M for infringing on its patents. Now, the Korean company wants that decision thrown out.
It again says it should pay a far, far smaller amount for stealing many of the design elements of the iPhone.
