Apple has been ordered by the U.S. federal jury in Texas to pay $533 million in damages for infringing the gaming patents of Smartflash that were used in iTunes.
Texas-based Smartflash claimed that Apple intentionally used three of their patents without their permission. The licensing firm originally expected $852 million and even if they failed to get the said amount, it is still higher than the $4.5 million offer of Apple, Bloomberg Business reported.
"Apple doesn't respect Smartflash's inventions," said company lawyer John Ward of Ward & Smith in Longview, Texas, to the jury. "Not a single witness could be bothered with reviewing the patent."
Based on the court documents obtained by Apple Insider, Smarflash founder Patrick Racz met with executives, including current Apple executive Augustin Farrugia, to talk about the patents more than a decade ago. Farrugia was with Gemalto during the meeting before he moved to Apple in 2002. The lawyers alleged that Apple might have learned about the technology because of that meeting.
The complaint alleged that the Cupertino-based company integrated the gaming patents to its own applications such as Game Circus LLC's Coin Dozer and 4 Pics 1 Movie.
Predictably, Apple denied the allegations and argued that the patents were invalid and weren’t infringed. The lawyers also defended that $852 million was “excessive” since the dispute is just for a single feature.
"Smartflash makes no products, has no employees, creates no jobs, has no U.S. presence, and is exploiting our patent system to seek royalties for technology Apple invented," said Kristin Huguet, an Apple spokeswoman, to Bloomberg Business. "We refused to pay off this company for the ideas our employees spent years innovating and unfortunately we have been left with no choice but to take this fight up through the court system."
Apple plans to appeal the case.
