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Although I never end up using it unless I browse the music of my supine iPhone, people love Cover Flow, Apple's virtual shelf for iTunes on Mac and iOS that displays the albums by their cover ( or, under OS X, by its preview image). I always thought it was a good idea, but not particularly practical for dealing with large collections. Not really worth it.
One wonders if Apple is wondering about the same thing this morning after a federal court in East Texas ruled that Apple had violated patents owned by Mirror Worlds, a company created by a Yale computer teacher and, tragically, David Gelernter, victim of the bombing, saw himself ordered by the court to pay $ 208.5 million in damages for the transgression.
The Time Machine interface, which shares similarities with Cover Flow, was also discussed in the lawsuit, which was first filed by Mirror Worlds in March 2008.
On the positive side, it seems that Apple has good reason to appeal: they got a patent for Cover Flow in April. In addition, the Federal Court of Eastern Texas seems to be well known for being too friendly to the plaintiffs, after inflicting significant damage in similar litigation in the past … to the point that it has become tourist place for people seeking to inflict significant damage to large companies.
At the very least, however, this case is indicative of the confusing issue of software patents, which – in the current system – are distributed in far too frivolous and multiparty terms for a variant of the same idea. Apple may have failed today in a frivolous pursuit of software patents, but it's not as if its file shooters did not contain a few of theirs, waiting to be eliminated and used against competitors.
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