Apple may owe VirnetX a billion in royalties

Apple has to pay over a billion dollars to an alleged patent troll called VirnetX. It is one of the umpteenth lawsuits between the two companies.

Apple may have to pay more than a billion dollars to internet security company VirnetX for patent infringement. It is a lawsuit from last year that did not end positively for the iPhone maker. Now a federal judge is rejecting Apple’s request for a retrial. This makes the credit side of Apple’s balance sheet a bit bigger.

Apple has to deal with VirnetX

Apple’s request not to pay the pantent fine to VirnetX has been rejected, according to Reuters. With that, the billion-dollar company has to pay $ 502.8 million, but the fine from a previous case plus interest and royalties would increase that amount to $ 1.1 billion, about € 910 million.

It is a patent on a variant of a virtual private network (VPN). According to Apple, this patent should not be possible at all. The jury did not want to hear about that, but the iPhone maker is not alone in claiming this.

For example, IndependentUK writes that VirnetX is a typical patent troll; a company that doesn’t actually sell a product or service, but makes their money from patenting arbitrary things and the subsequent lawsuit.

It is difficult to prove such a claim. Probably that is why the judge decided to attach a simple royalty sum to this. But it is not over yet; Apple can still appeal. Among other things, the amount of royalties is still being discussed.

Apple and VirnetX have been battling for patents for a decade. VirnetX has already claimed in several cases that Apple uses a proprietary technology of theirs without paying for it. For the time being, Apple actually always had to dock. Not that you need to feel very sorry for them, because that $ 1.1 billion is only 0.37% of their annual sales.