Tech giant Apple has been ordered to pay $532.9 million in damages after a federal jury found it guilty of wilful patent infringement.
The jury, sitting in the US District Court for the Eastern District of Texas, took eight hours to decide that Apple's iTunes software infringed three patents belonging to licensing firm Smartflash.
It is thought that Smartflash had asked for $852 million in damages for Apple's willful infringement of the patents, which have been described as covering portable data carriers and computer networks for payment information storage, access, management and validation.