In Entering Judgment for VirnetX, Judge Schroeder Sees a Bleak House in the Long-Running Dispute with Apple

Eastern District of Texas Judge Robert W. Schroeder III has docketed an unredacted order denying Apple’s posttrial motions challenging the verdict from a jury awarding VirnetX Inc. in excess of $500M this past October based on a $0.84 per infringing unit royalty rate. The court refused to set aside the verdict or order a new trial, on damages or otherwise, endorsing the jury’s figures and imposing an ongoing royalty at the same rate. Judge Schroeder bookended his order with quotations concerning the seemingly never-ending case of “Jarndyce and Jarndyce” from Charles Dickens’s classic novel Bleak House, which sprawls (in most published forms) over 1,000 pages.