Apple Asked To Pay $330k/Day Because Of Facetime Patents

We all know that Apple, as a company, has far more money than they could possibly spend in this lifetime (within reasonable limits, of course, as we are not asking them to build a Death Star), but is paying fines due to a patent ruling in the court of law the best way to spend that kind of money? It was in November 2012 when a Texas jury decided that Apple was to fork out around $368 million in royalties to VirnetX, a company that owns patents relative to Apple services FaceTime and iMessage.

Fast forward to February 2013, and that ruling was upheld, with all four patents in question being reaffirmed as infringed. These patents have to do with creating a virtual private network between two devices (or VPN), and it seems that until both companies arrive at a kind of patent licensing agreement, Apple will have to fork out $330,000 each day to VirnetX. I guess that is one of the best ways to arrive at a solution, the longer Apple waits, the more money they bleed – something which shareholders would not be too happy with.

Edwin Kee
Categories: Apple
Tags: Apple Inc, Legal