The Apple-VirnetX patent battle has been ongoing since 2012. On February 10, 2020 Patently Apple posted a report titled " Apple lost its bid to Reargue the Validity of two VirnetX Patents in the U.S. Court of Appeals. The report noted that in November 2019 the U.S. appeals court voided a jury's calculation that Apple should pay VirnetX $503 million for infringing patents. However, the court left in place a Texas jury’s finding that Apple iPhones infringed two VirnetX patents relating to secure communications technology. After the trial Apple apparently tried to get the other patents in the case invalidated, but failed. Apple then tried to take their case to the U.S. Supreme Court and on February 24, 2020, the Supreme Court refused to hear Apple case.

We're now learning that Apple was told to pay VirnetX Holding Corp. $502.8 million, the latest jury verdict in a decade-long saga over patents for secure communications.

The jury in Tyler, Texas, reached its verdict in about 90 minutes. It was asked to decide only how much Apple owes VirnetX in royalties for VPN on Demand, a feature that allows users access to virtual private networks. An appeals court had upheld an infringement finding regarding VPN on Demand.

The companies have been embroiled in litigation for a decade. VirnetX, which said its inventions stemmed from technology it developed for the U.S. Central Intelligence Agency, argued that both VPN on Demand and Apple’s FaceTime features were using its inventions.

VirnetX had told the jury it was entitled to more than $700 million. Apple had countered that it owed about $113 million, claiming the royalty rate should be no more than 19 cents per unit. The jury settled on 84 cents per unit. For more on this, read the full Bloomberg report.