On Feb. 3, a federal district court jury ruled that Apple must pay my company, VirnetX, $625 million for willfully infringing four of our patents. To no one’s surprise, we were immediately labeled a “patent troll” by much of the press.

They turned out to be just slightly wrong on their facts. Indeed, sometimes the patent troll label gets wrongly applied to companies such as mine that have made a genuine contribution to U.S. national security.