Apple has successfully appealed the $502 million patent infringement verdict against VirnetX, resulting in a reversal of the decision.
On October 16, 2019, the iconic Apple logo was displayed at the entrance of the Apple store located on 5th Avenue in Manhattan, New York, as captured by Mike Segar in a Reuters photograph.
After a prolonged legal battle between technology giant Apple Inc. and patent licensing company VirnetX Inc., a U.S. appeals court has overturned a $502 million verdict in favor of VirnetX. The ruling by the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit was based on the cancellation of virtual private network (VPN) patents that VirnetX had accused Apple of infringing by the U.S. Patent Trial and Appeal Board. In a related decision on Thursday, the same court
affirmed a U.S. Patent and Trademark Office tribunal’s finding that the patents were invalid. Neither Apple nor VirnetX has commented on the ruling. The two companies have been embroiled in a legal dispute over VirnetX’s patents for over a decade, with multiple trials and appeals. In 2020, a jury in East Texas awarded VirnetX $502 million, which was based on the same patents in question in the Federal Circuit cases. In a separate case in 2016, VirnetX won a $302 million verdict against Apple, which was later increased to $440 million, over allegations that Apple had utilized its internet-security technology in features such as FaceTime video calls.
