Indiana Company Sues Microsoft, Google, Apple

[JMcEntegart]

There’s nothing more heartwarming than seeing a small company take on a huge player in the technology industry. However, when a company says it’s suing all three at once, it gets a very surprised, “Seriously?” from us.

Indiana Company Sues Microsoft, Google, Apple : Read more

 

[Guest]

A little late for this isnt it? Surprised they're not suing the creator of Firefox's TabScope addon. I seriously doubt they get anything from this.

 

[ravenware]

Sounds like a load.

File previewing is present in windowsXP for image and video files too.

 

[the last resort]

funny, they are from michigan.

 

[megamanx00]

What a load of......

Yeah I'm thinking patent reform in the US is just a little overdue.

 

[Blessedman]

the key here guys is that this patent was applied for 7 years ago, while win2k was still just a baby. Only granted this year, this could be a very large impact for this company. It probably won't hurt any of the companies they are suing, but for them it means a lot. To have you IP trampled on is disturbing.

 

[evilshuriken]

This feature is all over the place, not just used by the companies being sued. It's used in various distributions of linux, used by tons of image viewing/organizing applications.

Things like this can only be bad for innovation, when a company can come up with a great idea only to find out years down the road that there has been a patent pending on it by a company that never even planned on using the technology in the first place.

Not saying that is the case right here, but imagine if this was a smaller company being sued for something like this? It would bankrupt them.

 

[ossie]

The ole' "innovative" SW IP patent stuff...
Guess who is pushing it in other parts of the world, where this BS is still not patentable? Right, the three poor sued corporations, along other fat cats. They just taste a bit of the bitter pill, they like others to swallow.
All this "patentable" IP debate is good only for lawyers and other crooks.

 

[E7130]

This is one thing I would see hard to patent because it is almost in everything because it is a common thought, its called preview. I would think there would be a law that disallows patenting something so general, its like patenting the wheel.

 

[Guest]

tHIS COMPANY DOESN'T HAVE A CHANCE. aND THEY WILL LOSE BECOUSE FILE PREVIEW WAS FIRST USED IN 1998 IN LINUX. aND THIS COMPANY DEVOLPED FILE PREVIEW IN 2000 SO THEY CAN'T PATENT THIS IF THEY DIDN'T IINVENT IT.

 

[ckiraly]

Oh yeah, well I hold the patent on a blue screen that interrupts your hours of painstaking work right before you remember to periodically save...oh wait, that's MS' patent. Rats! Foiled again.

 

[tri-state]

It says that the patent was granted. So it does not matter if you think something is patentable. The fact is that is was done already. Which means that this small company may have a chance and be paid back royalty. Even if it was introduced before 2000, if the originator did not patent it, it means nothing just like copyright law you may have a claim to it but if you can't prove it oh well.

 

[falchard]

"System and method" They could be right on their patent. If the system and method of creation are the same then its reasonable they infringed on the patent. However, if the approach is different on uses commonly used coding/methods then it would not be valid.

Usually the money grabber lawsuits are ones who use a wide term like suing mmo developers because they have a text based chatting system in their game and they patented the idea without coming up with the method.

 

[antilycus]

lets get something straight. the U.S. cares more about its big business then its individuals or small companies. This company might be a "oh here you go little guy" from the big dogs, but if this isnt settle the courts would just laugh in small business's face.

This is a country of stereotypes and a system that rewards the rich and punishes the hard working middle/lower class.

 

[antilycus]

and the patent wasn't approved at time of developement, so these companies aren't held responsible for anything.

 

[m3kt3k]

UMMM it sounds like they applied for it about the time XP was comming out and that was also in XP/2k Beta. This very well could be two groups that are seperate had the same Idea at the same time.

 

[TwoDigital]

Crap, I guess I missed my chance to patent this "idea." I wrote a 'desk accessory' in C back on my Apple IIgs in 1989 which drew a preview window inside Finder for one of 18 different file formats so you could see contents without having to launch an external application. (Apple's OS' weren't multithreaded at that time.)

Here I find out I should have patented my idea and today I could be sueing this Indiana start-up in ADDITION to Apple, Microsoft, and Google. Geesh - I keep missing my gravy train.