Court upholds Apple victory in Cover Flow, Spotlight, Time Machine patents

An appeals court in Washington has upheld a recent Apple victory on a number of different patents for features in the OS X operating system, including things like Cover Flow, Spotlight search and Time Machine. A company called Mirror Worlds is trying to get a judgment that Apple infringed on its patents with those features, but after initially winning damages of more than $625 million in a jury case, Apple was able to get the decision appealed and wiped the initial ruling clean. Now, an appeals court has denied Mirror Worlds' appeal, leaving Apple the victor, at least until another appeal is filed and run through the courts yet again.

Apple's been doing well for itself in patent cases lately -- this ruling follows a huge decision a little while ago that earned Apple a whopping $1.05 billion in damages. That case is also probably set to be appealed by Samsung, as these companies will use whatever tactics they can to try and avoid paying out these huge sums of money.