What you need to know
- A court has slapped Apple with a $300 million bill over patent infringements
- A jury found the company owed Optis Technology the figure over 4G wireless technology patents.
- Apple plans to appeal the ruling.
Apple says it plans to appeal a $300 million patent bill handed down to the company by a Texas jury in a dispute with a patent troll over wireless technology.
In a ruling Friday a jury decided that Apple owed $300 million to Optis Technology over alleged patent infringements dated between February 25, 2019, and August 3, 2020.
As Bloomberg notes this is less than a ruling of $506 million given by a different jury last year, but Apple still isn't happy and plans to appeal. In a statement, the company said "We thank the jury for their time but are disappointed by the verdict and plan to appeal. Optis makes no products and its sole business is to sue companies using patents they accumulate. We will continue to defend against their attempts to extract unreasonable payments for patents they acquire."
The suit is part of a global theater of lawsuits filed by Optis which made headlines in July after Apple threatened to leave the UK market over the threat of a global fee pertaining to 3G and 4G technology:
Apple could leave the UK market if it is forced to hand over $7billion (£5billion) to a patent troll, a company lawyer has claimed. The lawyer called the fee "commercially unacceptable" and comes amid the news that Apple could be fined over its use of Optis Cellular Technology patents.Optis says that Apple used its patents relating to 3G and 4G technologies used in iPhones, something a High Court judge ruled was indeed the case in the case of two of the company's patents. But according to a This Is Money report, the prospect of having to hand over as much as $7 billion has Apple ready to pull out of the UK altogether.
As Apple and the report notes, Optis does not manufacture goods or products but rather acquires patents in the hope of extracting money from companies who already make use of them. The patents at stake originally belong to Panasonic, Samsung, and LG, the ownership of which was then transferred to Optis.
