Fallout from CAFC decision in Apple/VirnetX case

In VirnetX to Vringo’s Lost Millions Show Patent Peril , Susan Decker noted that other patent licensing companies were impacted by the Virnetx/Apple CAFC decision of Sept. 16, 2014:


Other public companies that rely on patent licensing fell with VirnetX yesterday. Spherix Inc., (SPEX) which has sued Cisco Systems Inc. and Juniper Networks Inc. over patents it bought, dropped 9.5 percent. Marathon Patent Group Inc., Acacia Research Corp. and Itus Corp. fell about 4 percent before recovering.


As to the ongoing debate about "low quality" patents, one should note that the validity of the VirnetX claims was affirmed by the CAFC (text: we affirm the jury’s findings that none of the asserted claims are invalid ). The "big deal" was about the calculation used for damages, with the particular Nash Bargaining Solution firmly rejected.

See earlier IPBiz post Apple escapes the Nash Bargaining Solution in VIRNETX case

Jason Rantanen at PatentlyO discussed another issue:


Since the VirnetX’s expert relied on the iOS devices as the “‘smallest salable units,’ without attempting to apportion the value attributable to the VPN On Demand and Facetime features,” the legal error was not harmless. Put another way, VirnetX sought to have the jury use the sales price of an iPhone when calculating infringement of its patents that covered two specific components of that product, without demonstrating that those components drove customer demand for the phones.