Beiruting News

Apple has suffered a patent defeat involving some of the technologies it uses in its iTunes store.

The company has been ordered to pay $533m (£344m) to Smartflash, a British Virgin Islands-based firm that owns and licenses tech-related patents but does not make products itself.

Smartflash had asked for a bigger payout, but said it was "happy" with the verdict.

Apple said it intended to appeal and called for patent reform.

"We refused to pay off this company for the ideas our employees spent years innovating and unfortunately we have been left with no choice but to take this fight up through the court system," the iPhone maker said in a statement.

Apple's defeat by Smartflash is the latest in a series of victories by companies referred to as non-practising entities (NPEs), and denounced by their critics as being "patent trolls".

Earlier this month, Samsung was ordered to pay Rembrandt IP $15.7m for infringing two Bluetooth-related patents, and security firm Symantec was told to pay Intellectual Ventures $17m for using two anti-malware inventions it owned.

The scale of the penalty imposed on Apple was, in part, determined by the fact that the jury felt the tech giant had not only used Smartflash's intellectual property without permission, but had also done so "wilfully" - meaning it had been aware of the infringement.

BBC