US-based technology giant Apple may have to pay $308.5 million (around Rs 2,235 crore) to Personalized Media Communications (PMC). A federal jury in Texas said the iPhone-maker must shell out this amount for infringing a patent associated with digital rights management, stated Reuters report.
On Friday, the jurors asked Apple to pay a running royalty to PMC. The running royalty is generally based on the amount of sales of a product or service.
In 2015, PMC sued the tech giant’s iTunes service for infringing seven of its patents including FairPlay, which is used for the distribution of encrypted content from its iTunes, App Store and Apple Music applications.
Apple successfully challenged PMC’s case at the U.S. patent office, but an appeals court in March last year reversed that decision, paving the way for the trial.
Texas-based PMC has infringement cases pending against companies including Netflix, Alphabet’s Google and Amazon. In 2019, PMC filed patent infringement suits against Google, Akamai, and Netflix. PMC licenses exclusively the patents of its founder and Chairman, John Harvey, an individual inventor for almost 40 years. Harvey has received nearly 100 patents. The patents describe and claim numerous critically important features needed for efficient distribution of video content over networks.
