Apple vs VirnetX Lawsuit (round 2)

The case between VirnetX (a specialized holding company) and Apple (you know who they are) is the biggest news in the patent world right now. For the second time in five years VirnetX is suing Apple for infringement on four of their eighty patents, which were bought from the Science Applications International Corporation. The patents are as follows:

1)  U.S. Patent #6,502,135 (“135 patent”): Agile network protocol for secure communications with assured system availability

2)  U.S. Patent #7,418,504 (“504 patent”): Agile network protocol for secure communications using secure domain names

3)  U.S. Patent #7,490,151 (“151 patent”): Establishment of a secure communication link based on a domain name service (DNS) request

4)   U.S. Patent #7,921,211 (“211 patent”): Agile network protocol for secure communications using secure domain names

Basically, these four patents are based around "real time communication" which is used in Apple software like FaceTime and iMessage. And unfortunately for Apple (but very fortunately for VirnetX), an East Texas Jury finally came to the conclusion that Apple was guilty of the infringement allegations and are now being forced to pay VirnetX $625 million in damages. A whole $102 million more than VirnetX originally wanted. On top of that, after their win, VirnetX’s shares more than doubled. 

To put this in perspective, VirnetX is a company of fourteen employees and work out of an office where they only pay $5,000 per month. So this is a ginormous win for them. In the past, these patent trollers have sued and won against Microsoft for $200 million in 2010 and then again, filed another lawsuit against the company in 2015. But they lost a patent case it brought against Cisco last year, so they went back to the big boys at Apple for another round.