Court overturns Mirror World’s patent ruling against Apple

By Geoff Duncan April 5, 2011

A federal judge in Tyler, Texas, has overturned a patent infringement case brought against Apple by Mirror Worlds, vacating a $625.5 million damages ruling against the Cupertino company. The ruling marks a significant victory for Apple, which last October was found to infringe on display technology from Connecticut-based Mirror Worlds in technologies like Spotlight, Time Machine, and Cover Flow. The original case maintained that Apple infringed on three patents, and a jury awarded Mirror Worlds $208.5 million in damages for each patent.

Apple Cover Flow — Image used with permission by copyright holder

According to Bloomberg, U.S. District Judge Leonard Davis did not find that Mirror Worlds was able to substantiate its infringement claims. “Mirror Worlds may have painted an appealing picture for the jury, but it failed to lay a solid foundation sufficient to support important elements it was required to establish under the law,” Davis wrote in his ruling.

The case dates back to 2008. Mirror Worlds’ technology surrounds “document streaming,” wherein different types of documents are presented to the users has stacks or piles formed by users’ criteria, and through which users can flip or browse to find what they want. That loosely describes the interface found in Apple’s Cover Flow and Time Machine technologies, as well as Apple’s system-wide Mac OS X search feature Spotlight. Apple challenged the validity of two of the patents, and denied it was infringing in any case.

Neither Apple nor Mirror Worlds have yet had any comment on the ruling.

Although the $625.5 million isn’t a huge penalty to the cash-flush Apple at the moment, getting out from under an infringement ruling does keep the company’s face a little cleaner on the patent infringement front, which may be helpful in terms of public perception as it engages in high-stakes, long-term patent disputes with the likes of HTC and Nokia over smartphone and other technologies.

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