Apple settles GUI lawsuit with IP Innovation
Posted by Dennis Sellers 
Jun 15, 2007 at 9:46am
Acacia Research Corp. has announced that IP Innovation, a wholly owned subsidiary that is a part of the Acacia Technologies group, has entered into a settlement and license agreement with Apple covering patents that relate to graphical user interface (“GUI”) systems. The agreement resolves patent litigation that was pending in the District Court for the Eastern District of Texas with respect to certain Apple products.
IP Innovation, an intellectual property agency, sued Apple on April 18 over its operating system interface. Amazingly, the patent in question dates back to 1984 via references in a 1991 filing by Xerox, which actually linked to GUI concepts drafted in the 1970s on the company’s Alto workstations. More specifically, the lawsuit is for “workspaces provided by an object-based user interface that appear to share windows and other display objects.”
The four-page formal complaint alleges that Apple has engaged in “willful and deliberate” infringement of a computer control patent by selling its current Tiger operating system. IP Innovation asked for reparations for perceived damages which “exceed $20 million,” according to the suit. It also sought 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.
Details of the settlement weren’t announced. IP Innovation/Acacia says it’s licensed its GUI technology to Apple.
Acacia Technologies is best known as the owner/licensor of the “V chip” technology used in television parental control systems. Acacia owns over 140 patents grouped into 38 patent libraries covering areas including audio/video enhancement & synchronization, broadcast data retrieval, computer memory cache coherency, credit card fraud protection, database management, data encryption & product activation, digital media transmission, digital video production, and more.
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Contributor
Dennis Sellers
Dennis has been a newspaper editor/reporter (seven years) and teacher (seven years). He has over 4,000 magazine, newspaper and online articles to his credit. He has also covered the Mac and tech industries for over a decade for such online publications as MacCentral, MacMinute and now MacsimumNews.
