Apple wins appeal, court rules 'Cover Flow' doesn't violate patents
The U.S. Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit in Washington sided with Apple on Tuesday, ruling features including "Cover Flow" in its OS X operating system did not infringe on patents owned by Mirror World.
The court found that Apple did not violate patents that were owned by Mirror Worlds, a company founded by Yale university computer science Professor David Gelerntner, according to Bloomberg. Mirror Worlds first sued Apple in 2008.
Tuesday's decision was yet another major comeback victory for Apple in its litigation with Mirror Worlds. Last year, Apple won a separate appeal reversing a jury reward of $625.5 million in damages, though that judge upheld the validity of the three patents Apple was accused of violating.
But this week completely tossed the jury's 2010 verdict, negating both the damages and the infringement.
"The evidence was insufficient to support the jury's finding of infringement for all of the asserted claims," the appeals court wrote in its decision.
Mirror Worlds accused Apple of violating its patents with Spotlight, Time Machine and Cover Flow features in the OS X operating system for Mac. The patent holder argued that Apple's products infringed on patents related to how documents are displayed on a computer screen.
The initial complaint was filed in 2008 in the U.S. District Court for the Eastern District of Texas. Patent infringement suits are frequently filed there in hopes of a favorable outcome, which is precisely what Mirror Worlds was awarded by a jury in October of 2010. But Apple quickly appealed that ruling, setting the stage for the decision to be overturned.
The court found that Apple did not violate patents that were owned by Mirror Worlds, a company founded by Yale university computer science Professor David Gelerntner, according to Bloomberg. Mirror Worlds first sued Apple in 2008.
Tuesday's decision was yet another major comeback victory for Apple in its litigation with Mirror Worlds. Last year, Apple won a separate appeal reversing a jury reward of $625.5 million in damages, though that judge upheld the validity of the three patents Apple was accused of violating.
But this week completely tossed the jury's 2010 verdict, negating both the damages and the infringement.
"The evidence was insufficient to support the jury's finding of infringement for all of the asserted claims," the appeals court wrote in its decision.
Mirror Worlds accused Apple of violating its patents with Spotlight, Time Machine and Cover Flow features in the OS X operating system for Mac. The patent holder argued that Apple's products infringed on patents related to how documents are displayed on a computer screen.
The initial complaint was filed in 2008 in the U.S. District Court for the Eastern District of Texas. Patent infringement suits are frequently filed there in hopes of a favorable outcome, which is precisely what Mirror Worlds was awarded by a jury in October of 2010. But Apple quickly appealed that ruling, setting the stage for the decision to be overturned.
Comments
Yes, because Mirror Worlds is a known patent troll. They are a non-practicing entity. They in fact went bankrupt, and then sat on their patents in the hope of extorting money.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mirror_Worlds
Sometimes it is petty easy to see some level of similarity between a patent and how someone may have implemented an idea. However, I can not even begin to see the similarity in this one. When it first came up and even when the court rule for Mirror world the first time. I really thing the people who live in that location in TX have no clue and if you told them they were looking at pink bunnies they would agree.
Guess the Patent Troll Professor is going to be forced to get a job to pay all those lawyer bills.
Oh yeah, Eastern District of Texas. Happy Hunting Ground for plaintiffs' litigators.
Originally Posted by Kibitzer
How long until some fandroid comes on to claim that Apple has bought off the entire judicial system?
You mean after this point right now, or do all the times they said it in the Samsung trial count?
Apple's policy regarding attorneys: "When you care enough to pay for the very best."
I feel that there are some key ideas that David Gelertner invented and wrote about in his excellent book Mirror Worlds, published back in the early nineties, that are indeed core concepts in a number of the Apple UI's.
The problem is that from a legal perspective, as has been proven in court, his innovation wasn't protected by the patents.
For people who don't know, there are a number of great ideas in his work, and the book Mirror Worlds, that shaped many of the technologies around us today. The ideas in the coverflow Safari history browser, and Time machine are among them, but the commenters on this thread probably don't realise that ideas in cloud computing spring from his work as well.
This man is a key figure in inventing some ideas that Apple has been so talented in turning into products. It must be galling to know that the ideas have their wellspring in your own imagination, but that's never been the basis of exploitability or patentable innovation.
Don't be too hard here, this is not a typical patent troll case because in this case the Mirror Worlds company does represent a true innovator, its just unfortunate that Apple took the ideas, adapted them to make them not derivative of the prior art, and then made beautiful implementations. Thats not copying, thats innovating. But its still tough. History is full of many cases like this back to the Victorian Era.
I hear you and agree. The word 'inventing' gets in the way sometimes when 'imagining' would be a better fit in this litigious day and age. Jules Verne 'imagined' stuff rather than 'inventing' it by todays' standards but I appreciate the word can be used that way.
Quote:
Originally Posted by digitalclips
I hear you and agree. The word 'inventing' gets in the way sometimes when 'imagining' would be a better fit in this litigious day and age. Jules Verne 'imagined' stuff rather than 'inventing' it by todays' standards but I appreciate the word can be used that way.
In the 1974 book "Mote in God's Eye" Larry Niven and Jerry Pournelle "imagined" the iPhone. Pretty much spot on except it used a stylus. Since these guys write "hard" science fiction I wonder who they were talking to at the time for such inspiration?
All these shitty 'LOL EVERYTHING APPLE DOES IS COPIED TOO AND VIOLATE PATENTS' troll arguments are falling like a house of cards. Apparently most sane, rational people in the real world don't agree.
Originally Posted by Slurpy
All these shitty 'LOL EVERYTHING APPLE DOES IS COPIED TOO AND VIOLATE PATENTS' troll arguments are falling like a house of cards. Apparently most sane, rational people in the real world don't agree.
But what happens now with those old Australian, German, and British suits?
Quote:
Originally Posted by realpaulfreeman
I feel that there are some key ideas that David Gelertner invented and wrote about in his excellent book Mirror Worlds, published back in the early nineties, that are indeed core concepts in a number of the Apple UI's.
The problem is that from a legal perspective, as has been proven in court, his innovation wasn't protected by the patents.
For people who don't know, there are a number of great ideas in his work, and the book Mirror Worlds, that shaped many of the technologies around us today. The ideas in the coverflow Safari history browser, and Time machine are among them, but the commenters on this thread probably don't realise that ideas in cloud computing spring from his work as well.
This man is a key figure in inventing some ideas that Apple has been so talented in turning into products. It must be galling to know that the ideas have their wellspring in your own imagination, but that's never been the basis of exploitability or patentable innovation.
Don't be too hard here, this is not a typical patent troll case because in this case the Mirror Worlds company does represent a true innovator, its just unfortunate that Apple took the ideas, adapted them to make them not derivative of the prior art, and then made beautiful implementations. Thats not copying, thats innovating. But its still tough. History is full of many cases like this back to the Victorian Era.
Ideas are not supposed to be patentable, only implementations of ideas. Did Gelertner ever implement anything? If he did, then I agree with you, but that diagram looks more like Windows 3 than anything Apple has done. And while there may have been other such diagrams, if it looks like anything, it looks like Time Machine, not Cover Flow. I don't think anyone, Apple included, should be able to get a patent for placing a window or many windows on a screen. That's like getting a patent for placing lots of papers or file folders on a (real) desktop.
And once you accept the notions of touch screens, I'm not sure that anyone, including Apple, should be able to get a patent for swiping a screen because once you touch, using fingers in different ways is "obvious" as far as I'm concerned.
But then I didn't think Amazon should have received a patent for one-touch ordering, which Apple had to pay a license fee to use. Seems to me that storing a customer's information and recalling it has been obvious since the database was invented.
Quote:
Originally Posted by realpaulfreeman
I feel that there are some key ideas that David Gelertner invented and wrote about in his excellent book Mirror Worlds, published back in the early nineties, that are indeed core concepts in a number of the Apple UI's.
The problem is that from a legal perspective, as has been proven in court, his innovation wasn't protected by the patents.
For people who don't know, there are a number of great ideas in his work, and the book Mirror Worlds, that shaped many of the technologies around us today. The ideas in the coverflow Safari history browser, and Time machine are among them, but the commenters on this thread probably don't realise that ideas in cloud computing spring from his work as well.
This man is a key figure in inventing some ideas that Apple has been so talented in turning into products. It must be galling to know that the ideas have their wellspring in your own imagination, but that's never been the basis of exploitability or patentable innovation.
Don't be too hard here, this is not a typical patent troll case because in this case the Mirror Worlds company does represent a true innovator, its just unfortunate that Apple took the ideas, adapted them to make them not derivative of the prior art, and then made beautiful implementations. Thats not copying, thats innovating. But its still tough. History is full of many cases like this back to the Victorian Era.
Gelertner is an interesting guy. He was one of the Uni-bomber victims. Apple also bought Cover Flow from another party.
Is that a drawing of Apple's old Hypercard?