Apple Inc.(NASDAQ:AAPL), which is trigger-happy when
it comes to suing other companies for patent violations, for once found itself
at the receiving end when a court found it guilty of violating the patents of a
software firm VirnetX Holding Corporation(NYSEAMEX:VHC).
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VirnetX had sued Apple alleging that the company had
violated the patents on a particular technology for creating a virtual private
network between computers and another solving DNS security issues.
A Texas court, where the compliant was filed by the
software firm, ruled that Apple liable to pay $368 million in damages to
VirnetX.
The focus of the trial was Facetime, an application
that allows users of Apple devices to chat to each other using video. VirnetX
had alleged that Facetime video calls had infringed on its patents.
For VirnetX, this is not the first time that it has
won a lawsuit against a high profile company. About a couple of years back, it
had won about $106 million from Microsoft for patent violations.
VirnetX has a separate case against Apple pending with
the International Trade Commission and it has court cases against Cisco, Avaya
and Siemens scheduled for trial next year.
“For years Apple refused to pay fair value for the
VirnetX patents,” Doug Cawley, a lawyer at McKool Smith, said in closing
arguments, according to Bloomberg. “Apple says they don’t infringe. But Apple
developers testified that they didn’t pay any attention to anyone’s patents
when developing their system.”
Shares of VHC soared 22% in Wednesday’s session.
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