[7] Vringo was founded in 2006 by Israeli entrepreneurs and venture capitalist Jonathan Medved[8] and mobile software specialist David Goldfarb.

[10][11][12] On March 14, 2012, Vringo entered into a definitive agreement to merge with Innovate/Protect, an intellectual property company founded by Andrew Kennedy Lang, the former chief technology officer at Lycos,[13] and Alexander R. Berger, a Vice President at Hudson Bay Capital Management.

[15][16] James Altucher, a graduate school colleague of Lang, posted an article[17] on Tech Crunch drawing attention to the history of the patents that Vringo had acquired from Lycos.

[19] The company was invited to ring the opening bell at the New York Stock Exchange on August 1, 2012, to mark the successful completion of the merger.

[28] In May 2013, the defendants argued that I/P Engine was not entitled to any post-judgment royalties because they had ceased infringement by changing the AdWords system.

In fact, they have designed a system that clearly replicates the infringing elements of old AdWords," and for those reasons, the court enhanced the royalty rate "by just over 40% to 6.5%.

A Google spokesperson said on January 22, 2014, after losing the trial and post-trial motion practice, that the AdWords case "further highlights the mischief trolls can make with the patent system".

In dissenting, Circuit Judge Raymond Chen highlighted the majority opinion's failure "to accord sufficient deference to the jury's findings of fact," and explained that the majority's conclusion "squarely conflicts with the jury's express finding" that the prior art lacked specific elements claimed by the patents in suit.

[33] Intellectual Asset Magazine called the decision "the most troubling patent case of 2014," and said the appeals court's decision "should be of huge concern to all patent owners in the U.S."[34] I/P Engine hired David Boies to file a petition at the Supreme Court of the United States seeking a review of the case.

[47] In proceedings before U.S. District Judge Lewis A. Kaplan, Vringo sought and obtained a temporary restraining order (TRO) and later a preliminary injunction (PI) preventing further disclosures of the confidential settlement materials.

The following week, when Vringo made Judge Sleet aware of the facts of the case, he rescinded the order, transferred ZTE's case to the Southern District of New York, and noted he and Judge Kaplan had, referring to ZTE's conduct, "commiserated on the happenings here, not altogether a happy visit.

In the course of the litigation, Judge Kaplan ordered ZTE's attorneys at King & Spalding LLP to show cause for why they should not be sanctioned for intentional discovery delays and harassment.

[51] ZTE also refused to send its general counsel, Guo Xiaoming, to New York to appear in the case, saying it believed he could be questioned or detained in relation to a separate criminal investigation by the Federal Bureau of Investigation, for which a grand jury in Texas had been empaneled, into allegations ZTE shipped millions of dollars of banned U.S. surveillance equipment to Iran.

"[52] On December 7, 2015, ZTE entered into an agreement with Vringo to pay them a lump sum settlement amount of $21.5 million.