The jury deliberated for about five hours before delivering its verdict on Monday night. The company, whose patents were originally held by Nokia Corp, was seeking $100 million in damages at trial. It said it was entitled to a portion of Apple’s device sales, and of similar, future devices. Apple pegged damages, if any, at less than $1 million.
The jury also rejected Apple’s claim that Core Wireless breached its obligation to license its patents, which are considered essential in the industry, on fair and non-discriminatory terms.
So what happens to these patents now? Apple basically said it would be happy paying under $1 million, but the jury said they had to pay nothing. Are the patents worthless? Oh the patent system is so confusing.
Patents are valid until someone asks the government entity to invalidate it.
But Jury just found that Apple didn’t infringe these sets of patent on given devices.
My guess would be these are old patents for older standard that Nokia fished off and probably is going to expire soon anyway.
The patents are on standardized technology, so they have to be licensed on a fair and non-discriminatory basis (so-called “FRAND”) with all licensees paying the same royalty. In this case, the patent owner tried to extort more money from Apple because Apple is the biggest dog in the game. So the patent holder was essentially penalized for their attempted extortion. They didn’t get their extortionary price, and as a penalty, they did not even get their FRAND price. The patents continue to be licensable in the original FRAND way. Likely, Apple will start paying whatever that FRAND price is.