Patent-centric spat costs Apple millions, Cisco and Avaya up next

Nov 7, 2012 09:19 GMT  ·  By

After suing Apple for infringing on a range of networking inventions allegedly used in products like FaceTime without a license, technology firm VirnetX has cashed in on $368.2 million / €286 million from the Cupertino company.

VirnetX is known to have won a $200 million / €155 million settlement with Microsoft Corp. in 2010. Then, it went after Apple, claiming its products infringe on networking patents owned by the company.

Doug Cawley, a lawyer with McKool Smith in Dallas who represented VirnetX, said Apple refused to pay “fair value for the VirnetX patents […] for years.”

“Apple says they don’t infringe. But Apple developers testified that they didn’t pay any attention to anyone’s patents when developing their system,” said Cawley, according to Bloomberg.

The Cupertino, California-based Apple Inc. said its FaceTime software used a different technology than the one cited by VirnetX.

The patent holding and technology licensing company has additional cases pending against Cisco and Avaya, citing similar infringements.