Patent holding company VirnetX has announced it will make an attempt to add Apple’s most recent products to an ongoing patent infringement action that accuses Apple of violating VirnetX’s secure networking patents.
According to the announcement, VirnetX has petitioned the U.S. District Court for the Eastern District of Texas to allow the inclusion of Apple’s iPad Air, iPad mini with Retina display, iPhone 5s, iPhone 5c, iPod Touch with Retina display, and latest Mac notebooks and desktops — essentially, every product capable of making a FaceTime call — in the suit over patents covering peer-to-peer VPN technologies.
The company first took Apple to court back in November 2011 over the iPhone 4S’s FaceTime feature, which VirnetX claimed infringed their U.S. Patent No. 8,05,181 entitled “Method for Establishing Secure Communication Link Between Computers of Virtual Private Network.” Apple lost the case, and was ordered to pay $368,160,000 in damages. Apple later appealed the award, but it was upheld.
Flush with victory, VirnetX again filed suit, asserting the same patent against Apple’s iPhone 5, fourth-generation iPad, iPad mini, fifth-generation iPod touch and the then most current models of the Mac computers. The second suit is still pending, and that is the lawsuit VirnetX is seeking to pile onto.
While Apple has since altered FaceTime in order to avoid further infringement, VirnetX says the changes have not been substantial enough, and still infringe on the technology they own.
