Apple Pays VirnetX $454 Million for Patent Infringement After U.S. Supreme Court Refuses to Hear Apple's Appeal

Apple has paid VirnetX a total of $454,033,859.87 following the conclusion of a long-running patent infringement battle, VirnetX announced today.

virnetx apple
The patent dispute between VirnetX and Apple dates back to 2010 when VirnetX accused Apple's FaceTime feature of infringing on its intellectual property, and there are multiple lawsuits involved.

In this particular case, Apple was ordered to pay $302 million in October 2016, but with interest and other costs included, the judgement was increased to $440 million. Though Apple appealed the $440 million award many times, courts have continually ruled in VirnetX's favor.

Most recently, Apple attempted to get the U.S. Supreme Court to hear its appeal, but the Supreme Court in February 2020 declined to intervene.

Apple claimed that the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office had canceled "key parts" of many of the patents involved in the case, but the courts rescinded that cancelation, leaving Apple responsible for the $440 million payment.

This is just one of two VirnetX cases that Apple has been fighting. In the second case, VirnetX was awarded $502 million, but the ruling was partially overturned last year and sent back to the lower courts to determine new damages. Apple in February attempted to get a rehearing to determine patent validity, but was denied.

Popular Stories

iOS 26 Feature

iOS 26.1 to iOS 26.4 Will Add These New Features to Your iPhone

Wednesday October 1, 2025 1:26 pm PDT by
iOS 26 was released last month, but the software train never stops, and iOS 26.1 beta testing is already underway. So far, iOS 26.1 makes both Apple Intelligence and Live Translation on compatible AirPods available in additional languages, and it includes some other minor changes across Apple Music, Calendar, Photos, and Safari. More features and changes will follow in future versions,...
john ternus on stage

Gurman: Major Apple Leadership Shakeup Impending With John Ternus as Next CEO

Monday October 6, 2025 6:21 am PDT by
Apple is entering its most significant leadership transition in more than a decade as multiple senior executives prepare to depart and CEO Tim Cook begins to shape the company's next generation of leaders, according to Bloomberg's Mark Gurman. In the latest edition of his "Power On" newsletter, Gurman explained that Jeff Williams, who was viewed as Cook's potential successor for several...
iPhone 17 vs Air and Pros Feature

New iPhones See 'Stronger Than Expected' Demand With One Exception

Thursday October 2, 2025 7:26 am PDT by
Nearly two weeks after the iPhone 17 series launched, analysts at investment banking firm Morgan Stanley said demand for the devices has been "modestly stronger than we originally expected," based on a combination of extended shipping estimates on Apple's online store and information it gathered from Apple's supply chain. There has been strong early demand for the iPhone 17, iPhone 17 Pro,...
iOS 26 Feature

iOS 26 Adds These 200 New Features and Changes to Your iPhone

Saturday October 4, 2025 8:19 am PDT by
Apple's website offers a list of nearly 200 new features and changes (PDF file) included in the software update, released last month. Apple also shared equivalent lists for iPadOS 26 and macOS Tahoe. iOS 26 is compatible with the iPhone 11 and newer. To install the update, open the Settings app on your iPhone, tap on General, and tap on Software Update. Below, we have highlighted eight ...
ios 26 1 slide to stop

Apple Fixes Alarms in iOS 26.1

Monday October 6, 2025 11:56 am PDT by
With the second beta of iOS 26.1, Apple updated the design of alarms set on the iPhone, making them harder to dismiss than before. Stopping an alarm in iOS 26.1 beta 2 requires a new Slide to Stop gesture rather than a simple tap. You can continue to tap to snooze an alarm, but if you want to turn it off entirely, you need to use a swipe. Transitioning from a tap to a slide gesture to...
macbook air prime day 2025

M5 MacBook Air: Release Date, Features, and Performance Predictions

Friday October 3, 2025 3:39 am PDT by
The MacBook Air is Apple's most popular laptop – a thin, fanless machine that wields quiet power thanks to the efficiency of Apple silicon. While the M4 model isn't exactly old, attention is already turning to its successor. Apple doesn't telegraph new product launches ahead of time, but we can draw a surprisingly clear picture of what to expect by looking at Apple's silicon roadmap,...
iCloud iPhone 17 Pro

Apple Highlights Five Perks for iPhone Users Who Pay for iCloud Storage

Monday October 6, 2025 6:29 am PDT by
After launching new iPhones last month, Apple is promoting iCloud+ with a prominent banner on its home page, in a bid to boost its services revenue. In addition to more storage, all iCloud+ plans include five perks for iPhone users. As a refresher, iCloud includes 5GB of storage for free. If you want extra storage, you need to subscribe to an iCloud+ plan. In the United States, prices range...
ipad mini 7 feature blue

iPad Mini 8 on the Way: Expected Features and Release Timeline

Monday October 6, 2025 5:05 am PDT by
A new iPad mini is "absolutely" on the way, according to Bloomberg's Mark Gurman. So what should we expect from the successor to the iPad mini 7 that Apple released a year ago? Processor and Performance Apple is working on a next-generation version of the iPad mini (codename J510/J511) that features the A19 Pro chip, according to information found in code that Apple mistakenly shared in...

Top Rated Comments

Art Mark Avatar
73 months ago
They are a joke of a company - Virnetz...more like a Virus than some other things out there.
Score: 5 Votes (Like | Disagree)
eoblaed Avatar
73 months ago
I can see someone filling that out: "... and eighty .. seven .. cents."

Wow, that's big check to write.
Score: 4 Votes (Like | Disagree)
farewelwilliams Avatar
73 months ago
Virnetx readying their next set of their master patent troll plan
Score: 4 Votes (Like | Disagree)
Carnegie Avatar
73 months ago

Kinda wonder how much actual revenue the company has made compared to how much they've won in lawsuits.
VirnetX has very little revenue on a year-to-year basis. It's had less than $10 million total over the last 10 reported years. It loses $10-30 million every year.

It's managed to survive with money it received in 2014 and 2010 from settling with Microsoft ($223 million total) and with paid-in capital. It won't even get to keep all of this payment from Apple. It effectively bought the rights to the IP in question and has to pay part of what it generates from that IP to the previous owner.

The company's share price has basically reflected the market's assessment of what it will be able to get from Apple in these lawsuits. Those actions aside, the company really isn't worth much. So you consider the likelihood that VirnetX will ultimately get paid from those actions, and how much it's likely to get paid, and factor in expenses it will have... and you get an assessment of its value.

That's why its market cap is still only a little over $400 million, even though it got this payment and has won another judgment against Apple (though the damages in that case have to be reconsidered). It's also why its share price wasn't being hit like many other equities were in the broader market sell off.

...

Most recently, Apple attempted to get the U.S. Supreme Court to hear its appeal ('https://www.macrumors.com/2020/02/24/u-s-supreme-court-appeal-440-million-virnetx-case/'), but the Supreme Court in February 2020 declined to intervene.

Apple claimed that the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office had canceled "key parts" of many of the patents involved in the case, but the courts rescinded that cancelation, leaving Apple responsible for the $440 million payment.

...
The court (i.e. the Federal Circuit) had not rescinded the cancelation of the patents (i.e. patent claims) at issue in the petition to the Supreme Court. The Federal Circuit had upheld the invalidation of those patents. (There were invalidations of 2 other patents which the Federal Circuit sent back to the PTAB to be reconsidered.) Those patents, which are part of what Apple was found to have infringed and ordered to pay damages base on (in the first case, for which it has now paid the judgment), are still invalid. But Apple has had to pay damages based on them regardless.

Part of what Apple wanted the Supreme Court to do was give effect to the invalidation of those patents, or instruct the Federal Circuit to consider whether it should give effect to those invalidations, in the infringement case we're talking about.
Score: 4 Votes (Like | Disagree)
cmaier Avatar
73 months ago

Your time wasn't wasted. I learned a few things along the way.
Thanks for letting me know. I sort of gave up :-)
Score: 3 Votes (Like | Disagree)
zorinlynx Avatar
73 months ago
It's odd that this hasn't affected AAPL stock price much. $454 million is a whole...

400th...

of its cash hoard. Nevermind. I started writing this post before I looked up the numbers and can't believe just how massive AAPL is.


Odd thing to call a company that just received a check for $454 Million.
How much debt do they already have? It may not be that much in the end. After all they've been fighting this lawsuit for a while.


Apple tends to fight-to-the-death on stuff like this when other companies just pay the licensing fee. I don't know if that attitude comes from the top or from the legal department. Apple's lawyers have got to know when to hold 'em and when to fold 'em so I suspect top management or Cook himself orders them to soldier on even if they know the game is over.
It's because a lot of times these patents are ********.

Some method of doing something gets patented, but not used for anything. Then a company like Apple comes up with the same tech independently and makes an actual product. Then they get sued for it.

I'm not saying that's the case here, just saying it's important to defend yourself against lawsuits from these companies that just stockpile patents and don't make anything with them. You never know what might be buried in some patent when coming up with a new (to you) way of doing something.
Score: 3 Votes (Like | Disagree)