Apple, like many tech companies, have been forced to pay large amounts of money to trolls of patents, companies that buy small companies that have registered patents for the sole purpose of denouncing large companies, VirnetX being one of the most representative companies.
VirnetX has been litigating against Apple since 2010, and since then, it has already managed to extract close to $ 1.000 billion from him. At the beginning of the year, the company that Tim Cook runs was ordered to pay 454 million dollars. A few days ago, he received a last sentence in which he was forced to pay 502 million more dollars.
As we can read in Directions, the judge asked the jury of the case to determine how much Apple had to pay VirnetX in royalties for use VPN technology on iPhones a feature that allows users to access virtual private networks, a technology VirnetX claims was developed for the United States' Central Intelligence Agency (CIA).
Initially, VirnetX requested a compensation of 700 million dollars, while Apple was only willing to pay 113 million based on 19 cents per unit of iPhone sold. The jury finally decided that he had to pay 84% per unit sold.
From Apple they state that:
We thank the jury for their time and appreciate their consideration but we are disappointed with the verdict and plan to appeal. This case has been going on for over a decade, with patents that are not related to the core operations of our products and have been declared invalid by the patent office. Cases like this only serve to stifle innovation and hurt consumers.
After knowing this decision, the shares of VirnetX rose 21%, while those of Apple only fell a few cents. Before starting to extract money from Apple, he denounced Microsoft in 2010, with whom he reached an agreement that provided him with $ 200 million.
But of course they harm the consumer, but because of the brand itself, raising prices etc so that those who have taken it where it is now pay for it, what hypocrisy