Google, Microsoft, Apple sued

by Taylor Flatt on December 29th, 2008 at 10:25 am EDT - 410 views

The tech giants are being sued for infringement upon icons used in various programs. These include,

• Google – Chrome
• Microsoft – Vista, IE 8
• Apple – iPhone, Safari, Mac OS X

Cygnus Systems, the suers, are looking to score with this lawsuit. They claim to have had this patent since March 2008.  However, they have been applying for it since 2001 but first applied for it 1998. This raises the question, will they (Google, Microsoft, Apple), attempt to settle and get this out of the way, or will they fight it to the end?

That much has yet to be seen. The case was filed in the US District’s Court in Arizona where the CEO of the company, Gregory Swartz, lives. Gregory is seeking to prevent any further infringment upon these preview icons, thumbnails, used by these and other companies. This is leading it to consider accusing other companies and adding them to the stand as defendants to help prevent this and get them all in one swoop.

We will see how this turns out and hopefully it turns out to favor the little guy who seems to have the rights to these icons.

Source: CNet 
Image Courtesy of us-japan.org.