Apple Inc. (NASDAQ: AAPL) has been ordered to pay $300 million over the use of the company’s wireless technology in iPhones and other products.
What Happened: A Texas judge upheld a jury’s decision that Apple owes royalties to PanOptis Patent Management and its Optis Cellular and Unwired Planet units for patents held by the company on the LTE cellular standard. Optis says Apple products that utilized 4G networks were using its patented technology.
The order comes at the conclusion of a retrial of the case involving the patent dispute. In the first trial, a jury awarded Optis $506.2 million, according to report from Bloomberg.
In April, U.S. District Court Judge Rodney Gilstrap upheld the jury’s liability finding but ordered a new trial on damages. The re-trial focused on the amount Apple was to pay Optis in royalties.
Apple issued a statement indicating the company plans to appeal the ruling. “Optis makes no products and its sole business is to sue companies using patents they accumulate,” the statement said. “We will continue to defend against their attempts to extract unreasonable payments for patents they acquire.”
What’s Next: Optis has been attempting to collect about $7 billion from Apple. In a related case a judge in the U.K. is considering instituting a global royalty rate. Apple has indicated it may pull out of the British market if it is forced to pay an amount that is “commercially unacceptable.”
Optis claims that all fair offers have been refused by Apple and has accused the tech giant of being an “unwilling licensee,” a central issue in the London trial.
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