It looks all bad for Apple as a Texas jury has ordered Apple to pay under $533 million in a patent infringement case brought by Smartflash LLC. The case brought is regarding technology that the company said iTunes used without permission.

Apple argued that the patents were invalid but the court ruled in Smartflash’s favor. However the court did not grant the entire $852 million that the software maker was seeking. The patents involved are related to data storage and managing access through payment systems. Several other game developers who took advantage of the technology had settled outside court with Smartflash and left Apple all alone against the software company.

Apple tried pretty hard to get away from paying any royalties at all by presenting an argument that the infringed features were not the reason people bought iPhones. Well the court obviously did not pay any heed to such a baseless argument. Now that Smartflash has won this case it looks to hunt down more companies who infringed their patents and the next company to face its wrath is the Korean giant Samsung.

Smartflash only owns seven patents and the licensing fees from these patents help generate its only income. That is why the software company has to defend its patents so rigorously. So after all Samsung is not the only company that infringed patent rights but Apple has also joined the league. And according to 9to5Mac, Smartflash is also planning to sue Samsung for infringed patents.