Apple to Pay $308.5M for Infringing Patent with Fairplay Technology
“Apple has been ordered to pay $308.5 million to Personalized Media Communications (PMC) after a federal jury in Texas came to the conclusion that the latter’s patents were infringed,” reports Campbell Kwan in ZDNet.
“One of the patents in question is a ‘method of decrypting programming at a receiver station’, which the jury found Apple had used without permission for its digital rights management technology, FairPlay.”
“Despite PMC not being a creator or seller of any products, the court found that the company was not a patent troll as it licenses its own internally invented patent on an exclusive basis.”
“The $308.5 million figure is the culmination of royalties from when Apple first infringed the patents. In addition, the jurors have also directed that Apple pay a running royalty to PMC for when the patent is used in its products, which is based on the amount of sales of a product or service.”
