Apple loses FaceTime appeal against patent litigation specialist VirnetX

Apple to appeal order pay $440m over FaceTime patent infringement

Apple has lost its appeal in a patent infringement dispute over its FaceTime communication app and been ordered to pay $440 million to patent litigation specialist VirnetX.

The judgement earlier this week in the US Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit has also seen the amount that Apple must pay rise from $302.4 million to $440 million, including interest, enhanced damages and other unspecified costs, according to Reuters.

Apple stated that it plans a new appeal against the latest judgement.

The case has been running since 2010, with VirnetX picking up $23 million from an out-of-court settlement in December 2014 with Microsoft over broadly the same collection of patents infringed in the company's Skype communications tool.

However, Apple has refused to fold.

Back in 2012, the company was awarded $368.2 million in damages but that ruling was partially overturned by the US Court of Appeal owing to discrepancies in how the jury was instructed to calculate damages.

Then, in 2016, Apple was ordered to pay $625.6 million in damages to VirnetX, but again that ruling was voided because the "repeated references to the earlier case could have confused jurors and were unfair to Apple".

VirnetX was founded by former employees of services firm SAIC, who bought up the patents for technologies they had developed at that company.

The company is widely regarded as a ‘patent troll', a description that the company disputes.

"When we say that our patents are ‘valid' and of ‘high quality', we're not just making self-serving claims. We can prove it," the company wrote in a blog posting in April 2016.

It continued: "The simple and irrefutable truth, proven time after time in court after court to jury after jury, is that Apple infringed the patented security technology we invented and used it in its iMessage, FaceTime and VPN on Demand services.

"In addition, the courts determined that Apple's infringement and use of our technology in FaceTime and VPN on Demand services was wilful. Now these juries have decided that Apple must compensate us for the value that we created but they used without permission.

"If fighting for our rights makes us patent trolls, then Lady Justice herself is a troll."