In March Court for the Eastern District of Texas agreed to pay Apple 0.98% of the sales of the iPhone and iPad company VirnetX. On Wednesday, following an appeal of the company from Cupertino, a federal appeals court overturned the decision. Court in Washington, which hears appeals of patent cases, came to the conclusion that the impact on the verdict the judge's instructions to the wrong address to the jury.
Holding VirnetX (engaged in the development of telecommunications solutions) Apple filed a lawsuit in 2010 for $ 900 million. It was listed as a number of patents on networking technologies, including the principle of the video communications technology FaceTime.
In March, the Texas court ruled in favor of the holding company , Apple obliged to pay an annual fee of $ 341 million. This week, the Federal Court considered the appeal of Apple, has canceled the above decision. Themis has found no evidence that the Californian giant violated the right to VirnetX technology in smartphones iPhone, iPhone 3G, iPhone 3GS, iPhone 4, iPhone 4S, tablets iPad, iPad 2, iPad 3, and iPods iPod touch 4G and 5G.
The first patent VirnetX was presented over 10 years ago and describes the "fast network protocol for secure communications with assured system availability", and the second - "the creation of a secure communication channel based on the DNS-query". Another two patents protect "fast network protocol for secure communications using secure domain names."VirnetX patented technology illegally used in some elements in FaceTime, iMessage and «VPN on demand" operating systems iOS and Mountain Lion.
The appellate court remanded the case to Apple for reconsideration in the trial court.
Four years ago, VirnetX sued Microsoft $ 106 million for patent infringement on network technologies (VPN). After today's verdict, the Court of Appeal VirnetX shares fell more than 40%.