The latest entrant in the “lawsuit of the week” category, according to AppleInsider, is Mirror Worlds, who is suing Apple for “willful and deliberate” violation of its software patents (don’t they all?). The company believes that Apple is guilty of violating several patents and is seeking not just damages, but triple wordscore damages.
Mirror Worlds’s patents describe a way to have your files visually arranged in windows according to the timestamps as well as searching through them. Sound familiar? Apparently, it did to Mirror Worlds: they claim that Mac OS X and, by extension, all Macs are guilty of infringing upon the patents.
The lawsuit also ropes in the iPod and the iPhone for good measure, because even though they don’t present your data à la Time Machine, they’ve still been using timestamp-based organization ever since their release—and that should be reason enough for anybody.
The suit was filed in a Texas court and charged Apple for being guilty of violating not just one but four of Mirror Worlds’ patents, dating back to as early as 1999.
You’d think Mirror Worlds would’ve realized this sooner, what with the iPod line having been around for the past seven years [and hell, the MacOS has let you sort by date for, er, almost a quarter century -DM]—but no, it was only when Apple released Leopard with Time Machine that they realized they could sue. Apparently timeliness is not next to godliness.
[Hat tip to reader Shrenique.]
What I don't get is all these patents that seem to infringe on other patents. Isn' it the patent office's job to make sure your patent application is unique? If you are granted a patent then aren't you to assume that you did indeed think of it first? I think all these patent screw ups should be the responsibility of the patent office.
Also, I think these patent whores shouldn't be able to sue unless they actually have a competing product. The patent should only be able to protect you until yuo have brought your whatever to market. Anyone can write an idea down on a napkin. But I think the patent should ultimately lie in hands of the person who actually brings it to market.
krye, I doubt you would be so good-natured if you had a patent but couldn't get anyone to believe in your widget enough to finance you, then some other company comes along and says, "Hey, what a great idea!" and markets it.
That aside, the large portion of these types of lawsuits is for "shut up and go away" money, because most of these trials are too costly to fight or Apple simply doesn't want to be bothered with the hassle & costs of defending itself or Apple doesn't want the bad publicity. It's probably a little bit risky for the claimant because if Apple did put up its boxing gloves, it would knock the claimant out and likely be responsible for lawyer's fees and court costs.
It is partially the fault of the patent office. They just don't have enough computer experts to know enough about what these patents mean before approving them.
This is clearly reaching too far (the iPod and iPhone sync, and I guarantee timestamp-based synching predates any active patent). Time Machine might be an issue though. It's not sorting the files in a directory by date, Dan, it's sorting directory states by date.