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.
Dorian Says:
Didn’t Apple purchase the GUI from Xerox?
Posted on June 15, 2007
George Says:
Apple did not purchase anything from Xerox. They saw it demoed and built something out of some of the concepts they saw. I think this kind of patent litigation as a business model needs to go away. It’s a waste and feels like mob ruffing you up. It’s no better than being blackmailed.
Posted on June 15, 2007
Sponge Says:
Actually, Apple gave Xerox a bunch of Apple stock (either $1 million or 1 million shares, I can’t remember which) to get a look at their technology. While there may or may not have been a formal agreement regarding use of the ideas in forthcoming products (I’ve never heard of one but I don’t know for sure), it was certainly understood as the reason for Apple wanting to see PARC’s technology.
Posted on June 15, 2007
Greg Thomas Says:
Apple sold Xerox a block of stock for a million dollars that would be worth several months later for over 10 million. Xerox purchased the stock knowing full well it’s value. Although there was clearly an attendant risk in the purchase, Apple gave up more than 9 million dollars for the use of technologies Xerox was not profiting from.
Posted on June 16, 2007
Dorian Says:
So why is apple settling with this people? It makes them look like the guilty ones.
Posted on June 16, 2007
Orion Blastar Says:
Because Apple is guilty of stealing IP from Xerox.
Xerox showed them their PARC research center and hoped that Apple would license the Alto/Star technology. Instead of licensing the technology they built their own inferior version of it and didn’t use the networking, shared documents, or other advanced features of it.
http://www.pbs.org/nerds/part3.html
Steve Jobs: “Ultimately it comes down to taste. It comes down to trying to expose yourself to the best things that humans have done and then try to bring those things in to what you’re doing. I mean Picasso had a saying he said good artists copy great artists steal. And we have always been shameless about stealing great ideas ehm and I think part of what made the Macintosh great was that the people working on it were musicians and poets and artists and zoologists and historians who also happened to be the best computer scientists in the world.”
Steve Jobs is bragging about it to PBS over what they stole to make the Macintosh.
Steve Jobs: “But I heard a few times, people would tell me, hey there was these guys over in this garage at Xerox Parc you ought to go see em and I finally went and saw em and I saw what they were doing and it was better than what we were doing.”
Apparently Xerox had better ideas than Apple esp when it came to laser printers and GUI document creation.
Did you ever notice than when building the Macintosh, Apple flew a pirate flag? Why a pirate flag do you ask? What else do you fly when pirating some other company’s IP?
Posted on July 03, 2007
gryhound Says:
Orion Blaster cant read or doesn’t really know the history behind the PARC tour. Apple did indeed pay Xerox 1 million dollars to view the technology that they had developed. The Xerox scientist weren’t happy but eventually many of them went to work for Apple.
Orion needs to read Steve Wozniack’s (sp) book and watch Pirates of Silicon Valley
Posted on July 04, 2007
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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.
Jerry H. Appel Says:
So how does this not apply to Windows? Had Acacia Tech. already sued Microsoft?
Posted on June 15, 2007