Apple's Interface Held to the Fire

[Rich Tate]

It appears Apple is under fire again for allegedly violating patents pertaining to some of the interface options used in Tiger.

IP Innovation is demanding a jury trial and asks for reparations for perceived damages which "exceed $20 million," according to the suit. It also seeks an injunction that would prevent the California-based defendant from infringing on the patent, essentially blocking Apple from continuing to sell its current edition of Mac OS X and any future editions that might draw on the supposed infringements.

 

[UrielDagda]

Businesses that operate by just sitting on a bunch of patents, wait around for somebody to violate it.. then waiting for some time for the product to take hold before suing them for insane amounts of money (after doing no work other than sitting on thier asses waiting to pounce) should just be stripped of all thier patents.

 

[k1pp3r]

Businesses that operate by just sitting on a bunch of patents, wait around for somebody to violate it.. then waiting for some time for the product to take hold before suing them for insane amounts of money (after doing no work other than sitting on thier asses waiting to pounce) should just be stripped of all thier patents.

Agreed, our patent system needs a complete overhaul business horde them when they were ment for inventors, not revenue generators for corperations.

 

[Elios]

yes we are in need of a "use it or lose it" clause

 

[LoneWolf]

Not enough information, but from what we can read, this smells like yesterday's fish.

Note as the article mentioned, the place of filing (Marshall, TX). A place where judges are friendly to patent trolls, and thus a lot of garbage gets filed.

Note also, that it is being filed after OS X Tiger has been out almost two years. Why now? The only reason I can think of is that with Leopard about to come out, and IP Innovation's seeking an injunction on its sale too until the dispute is resolved, is that they think they can put Apple over a barrel (if their injunction succeeds) or at least create a court battle delaying Leopard's release to force Apple to settle with them. If this was a cut-and-dried case, one would think they could have filed a year ago or longer.

If we look at the patent filing date (1987, revised in 1991) I have to wonder if it's a valid patent as well. Not enough information, but it raises prior art questions. The Macintosh II line was out in `87, and System 7 was released in 1991. Windows 3.0 was released in 1990. Their window-drawing techniques might be different, so maybe they don't infringe, but I'd be curious to see the area of that patent in detail so we could know for sure. And why didn't versions of Mac OS X prior to 10.4 infringe? Not enough information yet, but my gut says this is bogus.