Enlarge (credit: Kiyoshi Ota/Bloomberg via Getty Images) Acacia Research Corporation, the largest publicly traded patent-assertion entity, won a $22.1 million verdict against Apple last week. A jury in the patent hotspot of East Texas found that Apple had infringed US Patent No. 8,055,820, owned by Acacia subsidiary Cellular Communications Equipment LLC. The patent describes a method of how cell phones can use "buffer status reporting" so that phone networks can optimize data usage.