Apple successfully persuaded a U.S. appeals court to overturn a $300 million jury verdict, which had ruled that the company infringed wireless standard-essential patents held by IP management firm Optis Wireless Technology.
Reuters:
The decision marks the second time that a nine-figure U.S. patent verdict for Optis has been overturned in the case.
Plano, Texas-based Optis and its affiliates sued Apple in 2019 in Marshall, Texas federal court, arguing that the tech giant’s iPhones and other products violated their patent rights in technology related to the LTE wireless standard.
A jury found in 2020 that Apple owed $506 million for infringing Optis’ patents. U.S. District Judge Rodney Gilstrap ordered a new trial on damages in 2021 after finding the award may not have been in line with Optis’ responsibility to license the standard-essential patents on fair and reasonable terms.
A new jury awarded Optis $300 million in damages after the retrial later that year.
The Federal Circuit on Monday overturned the award and remanded the case for a new trial on both infringement and damages. A three-judge panel said Gilstrap improperly worded the jury verdict form by combining all of the patents at issue into a single infringement question.
MacDailyNews Take: Patent trolls are an unrelenting scourge.
Please help support MacDailyNews — and enjoy subscriber-only articles, comments, chat, and more — by subscribing to our Substack: macdailynews.substack.com. Thank you!
Support MacDailyNews at no extra cost to you by using this link to shop at Amazon.
The post Apple wins appeal to overturn $300 million U.S. patent verdict appeared first on MacDailyNews.
