Jury orders Apple to pay $625 million in patent suit

A jury in Texas has ordered Apple to pay $625.5 million for violating patents owned by a firm founded by a computer science professor. Apple is challenging the verdict from the federal court saying the court has not yet looked at some of its counterclaims. If upheld, the verdict would be one of the largest in a patent suit. The plaintiff is Mirror Worlds, a company founded by David Gelernter of Yale University to commercialize his ideas. The patents cover characteristic Mac features such as Cover Flow, which lets the users skim through album covers or other content as if they were leaves in a book. Another is Time Machine, which performs automatic backups.