Apple has been ordered by a federal jury to pay $23.6 million for illegally using pager patents in its products. The company will have to pay the fine to a Texas based firm, Mobile Telecommunications Technologies.
Apple has been using SkyTel pager technology on its iPhone and other devices without a permission. Mobile Telecommunications was considered a wireless messaging pioneer in the 1990s, when its SkyTel 2-Way paging system was the state of the art for mobile communication. Now, MTel is a licensing company controlled by United Wireless Holdings,which operates the SkyTel paging system for use by first responders and doctors.
Apple denied the allegations of patent infringement and said MTEL was trying to take credit for everything from emoji to calendar invites. It argued the patents were invalid when they were issued in the 1990s. This is a second case where Apple was accused of pager patent technology but the company did win that case.