[burghguy]

You are free to doubt away, but you are badly misinformed about the case. First, there is no degradation of service at present because Apple gave up on trying to work around either VPN on Demand or FaceTime. However, for the short period when a “workaround” using relay servers was in place, over 50,000 consumer complaints were filed with Apple, so they went back to infringing. Second, while I agree that the term “willful” has not been determined by Judge or jury to date, Apple continues to use technology that they have no license to use. Judge Davis’ penalty on the RRR was, in effect, a determination that Apple was willfully violating VHC patents. You seem to think that the security VHC provides Apple products is inconsequential, but in fact it is the centerpiece of Apple’s Ios system. VHC will introduce at trial that Apple said in the original trial that a workaround would take “about a month” and cost “less than 5 million”, when in fact there is still no workaround and an attempt to do so cost $20 million a month and provided poor quality service. Apple is screwed. Patents not invalid and Apple has been infringing them for almost 10 years. Even if the RRR is reduced, the total dollar amount for prior damages will be huge, and as by then VHC will have an available App for sale that will provide this security to others, the jury will have a cost it can use to peg damages to, which I am certain will be at least as large as originally determined.

[Swordmaker]

You are free to doubt away, but you are badly misinformed about the case. First, there is no degradation of service at present because Apple gave up on trying to work around either VPN on Demand or FaceTime. However, for the short period when a “workaround” using relay servers was in place, over 50,000 consumer complaints were filed with Apple, so they went back to infringing. Second, while I agree that the term “willful” has not been determined by Judge or jury to date, Apple continues to use technology that they have no license to use. Judge Davis’ penalty on the RRR was, in effect, a determination that Apple was willfully violating VHC patents. You seem to think that the security VHC provides Apple products is inconsequential, but in fact it is the centerpiece of Apple’s Ios system. VHC will introduce at trial that Apple said in the original trial that a workaround would take “about a month” and cost “less than 5 million”, when in fact there is still no workaround and an attempt to do so cost $20 million a month and provided poor quality service. Apple is screwed. Patents not invalid and Apple has been infringing them for almost 10 years. Even if the RRR is reduced, the total dollar amount for prior damages will be huge, and as by then VHC will have an available App for sale that will provide this security to others, the jury will have a cost it can use to peg damages to, which I am certain will be at least as large as originally determined.

You are an advocate for the plaintiffs with a lot of wishful thinking. I know what the appellate court ordered. You apparently believe the lower court can reopen the case and re-try the whole thing de novo. They cannot. They can only re-try what was already decided for damages in the LOWER based on new instructions that are based on what the appellate court has directed. A new jury will start from Apple is guilty of infringing but now determine what is the appropriate royalty rate, based on apportioning the invention's utility to the overall device, not based on the value of the entire device. It will be pennies on the dollar.