Apple to Pay $625 Million After Cover Flow, Spotlight & Time Machine Patent Suit

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Apple is involved in all kinds of lawsuits all over the place and it looks like we have a first verdict in one of them. The Cupertino-based company has been fined an impressive $625.5 million for infringing some patents with Cover Flow, Spotlight and Time Machine.

The jury, probably filled with iPhone haters, and yes, that is a joke, has decided to award Mirror Worlds LLC $208.5 million for each of the three patent infringements.

Naturally Apple is not happy with how things turned out and it will fight back. In fact it looks like the company has already asked U.S. District Judge Leonard Davis to reconsider two of the three patents. Apple thinks that Mirror World is “triple dipping” by collecting $208.5 million on each patent, and the judge will apparently consider Apple’s requests.

I haven’t really followed this trial from the beginning so I have no idea if the parties involved tried to settle this thing before, but right now it’s pretty clear that Apple will have to shell out quite an impressive amount on cash. They definitely have enough reserves to afford such a substantial loss, so we’ll forget about this particular suit in the near future.

What’s outstanding here is the work of Yale professor David Gerlenter, the man behind Mirror Worlds Technologies, and the man that filed the patents back in 1999. Now, 11 years later, he will collect at least $208.5 million in cash for his laborious work, which is definitely a smart outcome. That also goes to prove that if you have a great idea you definitely should patent it. At some point someone else might use it without knowing, or disregarding, that you are the actual owner of that certain patent, and that will cost them dearly. From a different point of view though, it seems that more and more companies are fighting over patents, so please, if you are going to file your patents make sure they’re remarkable solutions to our potential future needs.