Apple Appeals Mirror World Patent Judgement

David Gelertner

David Gelertner
Mirror Worlds Founder

Apple has appealed a judgement handed down against the company in a patent infringement lawsuit launched by Mirror Worlds LLC. The company has asked U.S. District Judge Leonard Davis for an emergency stay, according to Bloomberg, and it is also looking for the judge to modify the monetary award given to Mirror World.

The suit alleged that Apple’s Cover Flow view used in Mac OS X and iOS devices violated three patents owned by Mirror World, and a jury agreed, awarding Mirror Worlds US$208.5 million in damages, damages the company is trying to have apply to each of the patents for a possible award of $625.5 million.

Apple’s appeal includes having the judge toss out the ruling that Cover Flow violates two of the three patents, telling the judge that there were outstanding issues regarding those two patents. The company also told Judge Davis that Mirror Worlds would be triple dipping if the award was applied to each of the patents individually.

In its court filing, Apple wrote, “in light of counsel for Mirror Worlds’ erroneous and objectionable suggestion that, among other things, damages should be cumulative while at the same time suggesting that Mirror Worlds was not ‘triple-dipping.’”

The judge asked both companies to supply arguments relating to that claim, and he said that if he found that either of the patents were not violated that he would reduce the claim accordingly.

Bloomberg also noted that Mirror World was founded by Yale University computer-science Professor David Gelernter, the author of Mirror Worlds: or the Day Software Puts the Universe in a Shoebox, from whence the name of the company came. He is also the author of Drawing Life: Surviving the Unabomber, a book about being the target of (and surviving) a Unabomber assassination attempt.