That part of the OP is misleading. The patent invalidations at issue in this Supreme Court cert petition were upheld - not rescinded - by the Federal Circuit. There were invalidations from two different patents which the Federal Circuit ordered the PTAB to reconsider. But Apple didn't argue in this cert petition that the Supreme Court should give effect, in this litigation, to the previous invalidation of claims from those two patents.
Here's a reader's digest version of what happened in this case as relates to this Supreme Court cert petition which was just denied.
VirentX sued Apple alleging infringement of four patents. It eventually won a judgment of infringement of all four patents. (And, to be clear, the jury didn't find that those patents were invalid.) In the meantime, in separate proceedings, the PTAB was considering challenges to the validity of each of those patents (i.e. relevant claims from each). The PTAB eventually invalidated the asserted claims of all four patents. The Federal Circuit heard appeals from both the infringement decision against Apple and the invalidation decisions against VirnetX's patents.
The Federal Circuit upheld the infringement decision, for all four patents, against Apple. Then Apple asked the Federal Circuit to review that decision en banc. In other words, Apple asked for a larger group of judges from the Federal Circuit to hear and decide the case. Previously it was only a three-judge panel which had heard and decided the case. (Circuit court cases are typically decided by a three-judge panel. It is rare that a full circuit court agrees to reconsider a panel's decision.)
Then the Federal Circuit upheld the PTAB's invalidation of the asserted claims of two of the patents at issue. Based on those upheld invalidations, Apple again asked the Federal Circuit to reconsider the case and give effect to those invalidations. It wanted he Federal Circuit to reverse the decision against Apple on those two patents and have the case sent back to the district court to reconsider the damage award based only on infringement of the other two patents. The Federal Circuit denied Apple's request to reconsider the case.
So Apple asked the Supreme Court to hear the case and decide whether the Federal Circuit should have given effect in the infringement case to the PTAB's invalidations of two of the patents at issue. Apple also asked the Supreme Court to hear the case based on an apportionment issue, but that isn't relevant to what I'm talking about here. The Supreme Court denied Apple's petition, effectively refusing to consider either the invalidation issue or the apportionment issue.
Generally speaking, a final invalidation of a patent (i.e. relevant claims thereof) by the PTO is given effect in pending infringement litigation. The question here was whether the infringement litigation was still pending. Apple's position was that it was still pending because the Federal Circuit hadn't issued a mandate and the Supreme Court hadn't denied cert.
Had the Federal Circuit's upholding of the invalidations at issue come a few months earlier, I think (but I'm certainly not sure) they'd have been given effect in the infringement case - meaning, VirnetX wouldn't have won on those two patents and the amount of the award against Apple would likely have been reduced.
All that said, there's another infringement case based on the same four patents which is ongoing. It is based on infringement by later versions of Apple's products and iOS. The two patents which were invalidated by the PTAB, and where those invalidations were upheld by the Federal Circuit, are no longer a part of that case. The Federal Circuit reversed the finding that Apple had infringed those patents.
The PTAB is currently reconsidering whether relevant claims from the other two patents are invalid. But the timing of the separate proceedings seems likely to work against Apple again.
