Apple has lost a jury trial in the patent hotspot of East Texas. Late Monday, a jury in Marshall reached a verdict that Apple must pay $23.6 million for infringing patents once owned by a Mississippi pager company. The verdict, while large, is only about 10 percent of what lawyers for Mobile Telecommunications Technology LLC (MTel) were asking for.

According to a Bloomberg report on the case, Mobile Telecommunications was a wireless messaging pioneer in the 1990s when these patents were filed. The patents were used in its SkyTel 2-way paging system. Now, MTel is a licensing company controlled by United Wireless Holdings, which operates the SkyTel paging system for use by first responders and doctors.

"The guys working back then at SkyTel were way ahead of their time,” United Wireless CEO Andrew Fitton told Bloomberg. "This is vindication for all their work." Fitton is also CEO of Hartmann Capital, a London investment bank.

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, and the company said that if the jury did find them valid, it should have to pay at most $1 million.

“Not common sense”

“A damage award of $237 million is not common sense. It’s not logical,” Apple's lawyer, Brian Ferguson of Weil Gotshal, said during closing arguments.

"This case is about fairness," said MTel's lawyer, Deron Dacus. "Apple is refusing to acknowledge the contributions of others."

While MTel's executives describe it as part of an operating company, its business model is very similar to the types of patent companies known as "non-practicing entities" or "patent trolls."

Since 2012, MTel has sued Amazon, AT&T, Blackberry, Clearwire, Leap Wireless, LG Electronics, Sprint Nextel, HTC, ZTE, T-Mobile, Samsung, and United Parcel Service. Most of those litigations were filed in the Eastern District of Texas and are still ongoing. Samsung is scheduled for a jury trial in the same Marshall courtroom on December 15.

Apple didn't comment on the trial results. It's common for jury verdicts in patent cases to be appealed.

MTel's original complaint (PDF) against Apple accused the company of infringing seven patents, but the case was narrowed to six by trial. Apple's iMessage features and e-mail apps were accused of violating the patents. The $237 million damage demand represented a royalty of about $1 per product for the iPhones, iPads, and iPod Touch products that were accused of infringing.

The patents-in-suit were numbers 5,809,428, 5,754,946, 5,894,506, 5,590,403, 5,659,891 and 5,915,210. Some of the patents have expired, but holders of expired patents are still allowed to ask for up to six years of back royalty payments.