Apple has been ordered by a federal jury in Texas to pay $308.5m (about £223m) in lost royalties for infringing on a DRM patent owned by Personalized Media Communications (PMC), Bloomberg reports.
PMC originally sued Apple in 2015, accusing the company of infringing on seven of its patents. This included FairPlay, which is used to distribute encrypted content via iTunes, the App Store and Apple Music.
Apple secured an initial victory at the US Patent Office, but an appeal in March 2020 took the dispute to court. In a comment to Bloomberg, Apple says it is disappointed with the decision and will appeal in turn.
This isn’t the biggest such fine levied against Apple in the past 12 months; in November the company was ordered to pay $500m to VirnetX, following a payout of $440m to the same company earlier in 2020.
This article originally appeared on Macworld Sweden. Translation by David Price.
Author: Viktor Eriksson, Contributing Editor
Viktor is an editor for Macworld Sweden. He covers the latest news about a wide variety of Apple products.