∞ Apple sued for infringing patents on Mac, Safari, and Mac OS X

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Apple is being sued for infringing on patents for the way it summarizes data on its Mac computers and Mac OS X operating system.

MONKEYmedia filed the patent infringement lawsuit in the Western District of Texas, Austin Division on May 13. The lawsuit claims that Apple infringes on three of its patents, including one that describes “the summarization and/or variable display of text and audio-visual content, based on the saliency of the content.”

The three patents were issued in 2001 and 2002.

As an example, Safari’s RSS Reader has the ability to show the headline and text. The amount of text shown can be changed by using a slider, which MONKEYmedia says is covered under its patents.

The lawsuit also points to the “Services” menu in Mac OS X that allows users to summarize a selection of text in a document. Again, this feature has a slider that allows more or less text, as determined by the user.

Products that MONKEYmedia claims infringe on its patent are the iMac, Mac Pro, Mac
Mini, MacBook, MacBook Pro, MacBook Air, Mac OS X, and Safari for Mac and Windows.

MONKEYmedia is asking the court for an unspecified amount of money in damages.


  • Tired of attorneys

    Troll.

  • TechWatcher

    The Patent system is a mess. The spirit and letter of the law have given way to technical squatting and misuse of the legal system.

  • tomacsh

    I think prior art exists for this functionality. The software was called Data Hammer and it summarized webpages based on setting a slider or an interface widget to determine how much info. to be displayed.

  • Just Some Human

    One, I am sick of patents being filed in Western District of Texas. To me this is a sure indication that a company has shaky claims on a patent. Two, how long can a supposed patent holder go, before trying to protect what he thinks he owns? And finally, I detest these companies that just go around buying up IP on the off chance that some day they might get money from litigation.

  • Dave52

    Getting a software patent seems to be the civil equivalent of a district attorney being able to indict a ham sandwich. Apparently the legal standards and precedent for patents went out the window when software came along. Although there are cases where software patents might be justified, the majority of the patents issued look lame and make me sympathetic to the ban-all-software-patents movement.

    • SteveS

      No, the problem isn't granting patents to software. There are many very legitimate software "inventions" that are worthy of legal protection. The problem is that nobody in the patent office seems to be able to distinguish the difference between something common and obvious and something complicated and worth legal protection. I'm not surprised that someone doesn't have a patent on the classic "Hello world!" program. (a one line program in most languages).

  • http://www.facebook.com/JurajBarukcic Juraj Barukčić

    Poor Apple… Every day a different lawsuit. I wonder what is going to be tomorrow.

  • Jeremy