Apple Will Pays $25M To Troll

Apple has settled for $25 million with Network-1, a non-practicing entity, or patent troll. Apple will get rights to use the covered technology, which Network-1 acquired from Mirror World Technologies. In 2010, Mirror World won a $625 million judgement against Apple in litigation over a number of patents, including the one at issue in the current  case, in litigation that it brought in the patent-friendly Eastern District of Texas, only to have it overturned on appeal. Listed as inventors on the patent (for a “Document Stream Operating System”) are Eric Freeman and David H. Gelernter, the legendary technology developer and researcher. Galernter, who once said he hated computers and that what success he had in computing “is because I fit so badly in the field,” is best known by many for having been targeted by the Unibomber, suffering permanent damage to one hand and losing an eye after he opened a mail bomb. In 2011, quoted in an article about what turned out to be Mirror World’s short-lived victory over Apple, Galernter expressed frustration over the way these patents have been claimed, not because of the money he never got, but because “of the deliberate failure to acknowledge work that we would have made freely available as academics.”