The iPhone maker has been accused of infringing the LTE patents of Optis Wireless Technology and its affiliates
iPhone maker Apple asked to pay $300m to Optis Wireless Technology and its affiliates to settle a patent dispute. (Credit: Jan Vašek from Pixabay)
A federal jury in the East Texas federal court ordered that Apple has to pay $300m for infringing wireless standard-essential patents owned by Optis Wireless Technology and its affiliates.
Last year, a jury in the same case ruled that Apple had to pay $506m for infringing the LTE patents of Optis Wireless Technology and its affiliates PanOptis Patent Management and Unwired Planet with the technology used in iPhone and other LTE-capable products.
In April 2021, US District Judge Rodney Gilstrap ordered a new trial in his Marshall, Texas, court. This was after he determining that the award may not have been in line with the responsibility of Optis Wireless Technology to license the LTE patents on fair, reasonable and non-discriminatory (FRAND) terms.
Optis Wireless Technology had filed its initial complaint against the tech giant in early 2019. Its claim was that the iPhone maker had infringed seven of its patents, which include US patent numbers 8,005,154, 8,019,332, 8,385,284, 8,411,557, 9,001,774, 8,102,833, and 8,989,290.
The IP management company claimed that it had negotiated repeatedly with the tech giant for reaching an agreement for a global FRAND license for the patents, however, the latter is said to have refused to pay a royalty.
Apple stated: “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.”
In March 2021, the iPhone maker was ordered by a federal jury in Texas to pay $308.5m in compensation to licensing company Personalized Media Communications (PMC) for infringing a patent related to digital rights management.