Slashdot Mirror
Apple Wins $625.5 Million Ruling Over Cover Flow
An anonymous reader writes "A federal judge has reversed a $625.5 million judgement against Apple in a patent infringement lawsuit pertaining to Apple's Cover Flow feature. The lawsuit was filed by Mirror Worlds, a company founded by Yale professor Dave Gelertner. '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,' US District Judge Leonard Davis explained in his decision."
. . . Of money. A solid foundation of money.
Though Gelertner’s patents were upheld by the court, Judge Davis threw out the $625.5 million damage award and closed the case in Apple’s favor.
Isn't this like saying "Apple infringed on your patents, but they won't have to pay anything. Have a nice day."
"You have successfully convinced me you have a nice patent. You have not convinced me it has anything whatsoever to do with Apple, or VLM at /., or chemicaldave at /. or pretty much anything else"
"Science flies us to the moon. Religion flies us into buildings." - Victor Stenger
I could of sworn I saw this kind of thing on CD jukeboxes and when flipping through a book. Maybe I was hallucinating.
Maybe you missed the words "on a computer", which makes it a completely new innovation. "On a phone" and "on a tablet" also make it completely new all over again. I mean, who would've thunk to make something that looks and feels like reality...on a computer/phone/tablet? It's so innovative. [/sarcasm]
Can you find a single patent that was granted because of the words "on a computer", "on a phone" or "on a tablet"?
No. You can't. Those words appear in dependent claims, and are there for the purpose of claim differentiation. The independent claim from which they depend doesn't contain those words, and is still patentable, because it has the key innovation.
The concept of claim differentiation is straightforward - claims can't claim the exact same subject matter... Dependent claims have to be smaller. If the independent claim is a large space on a Venn diagram, each dependent claim is a subset of that space. So, when someone has a dependent claim of "2. The method of claim 1, wherein the transmitting is performed on a computer," all that means is that the original claim 1 may apply to things other than computers.
Same concept - if claim 1 includes a network, and claim 2 says "wherein the network is the Internet," that just means that the network in claim 1 could be the Internet, or could be a LAN, VPN, or any other type of network.
That's it. The end. Respectfully, your complaint is out of pure ignorance of how patent law works.