Apple has been hit with a $145 million by the jury in San Diego over infringing two WiLan patents. The patents deal with wireless communication technology. Apple has also confirmed that it plans to appeal against the decision. The company previously rejected the claims of infringement during the pre-trial filings.
This dates back to 2013, when US jury ruled in favor of the Cupertino giant in which WiLan had sought $248 million in damages. This time around both the companies are in a patent infringement case. There isn’t much known about the lawsuit, so it remains unclear whether the firms reach a conclusion.
Previous, Apple was ordered to pay $502.6 million to VirnetX Holding Corp. after the company lost a patent infringement lawsuit. The verdict was announced by the grand jury in Texas after finding that Apple infringed patents that were related to secure communications
The legal battle between the companies has been going on for the past eight years. VirnetX makes most of its money from licensing patented technology that powers virtual private networks over the web. The company filed three lawsuits against Apple back in 2010 alleging that Apple’s FaceTime, iMessage, and VPN on Demand are already patented by VirnetX. In February 2016, Apple was ordered to pay $625.6 million in damages after two of the lawsuits were combined, but the verdict was later voided by a federal judge saying that combining two lawsuits would be unfair to Apple.
Later in October 2017, a federal judge in Texas ordered the company to pay $439.7 million, which was almost $140 million more than what the company was asked to pay VirnetX in yet another lawsuit. VirtnetX spokesman Greg Wood believes that the verdict “fair and appropriate,” but the judgment had a little impact as the Patent Trial and Appeal Board ruled the patents invalid in 2016.
Speaking of patents, this doesn’t seem to bother Apple a lot. The company recently filed a patent for an AR adaptive display for self-driving cars. The patent comes under the moniker ‘Adaptive vehicle augmented reality display using stereographic imagery.’