Apple now owes WiLAN US$85 million

The Canadian tech patent development group WiLAN has won a court case against Apple in which the former asserted that the latter had used its intellectual property without permission. However, the actual damages involved were to be re-assessed in a subsequent trial. This process has come to an end with the decision that Apple has to pay the plaintiff US$85.23 million.

Deirdre O Donnell, 01/27/2020

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The United States District Court for the Southern District of California has awarded WiLAN just over $85 million in damages, to be paid by the electronics giant Apple. This is the final decision in a long-running case concerning patent infringement. The same court had arrived at the same conclusion nearly 2 years ago; however, it also determined that a re-trial was in order to finalize the actual amount of damages to be paid.

Therefore, Apple had technically lost this case on August 1, 2018, when the District Court found that it had in fact infringed on the US Patents 8,537,757 and 8,457,145. They are both relate to mobile data and how it continues to function during phonecalls.

The jury selected for this initial trial accepted WiLAN's argument that Apple owed it $145 million, based on the sales of the mobile devices made using the intellectual property in question. However, a subsequent trial was ordered to re-assess this figure. It resulted in a decision to order the Cupertino company amount arrived at in this most recent ruling.