Apple fights $644m patent suit

Apple will fight a US$625 million ($644 million) ruling against it over document display methods it used in Cover Flow, Time Machine and Spotlight software.

A US federal jury last Friday awarded Mirror Worlds US$208.5 million (AU$215 million) for each of three patents, finding Apple had "willfully" infringed them.

The US$625 million damages bill would, if paid, be the fourth largest patent payout in US history.

Apple on Sunday challenged the decision claiming that Mirror Worlds would be "triple dipping" if it were awarded the amount for each of the patents, according to a Bloomberg report.

Apple also claimed there were "outstanding issues" with two of the three patents it was found to have infringed, according to the New York Times.

The little-known Mirror Worlds was established by a Yale University computer scientist, David Gelernter.

Gelernter was a victim of the Unabomber, mathematician Theodore Kaczynski, who in 1993 planted a letter bomb in Gelernter's mail which exploded in his face.

Kaczynski had targeted Gelernter to draw attention to scientists' contribution to the erosion of human freedoms through technological progress.