Google, Apple, Microsoft Sued Over File Preview

ClaraBow writes with this excerpt from MacWorld: "A small Indiana company has sued tech heavyweights Microsoft, Apple, and Google, claiming that it holds the patent on a common file preview feature used by browsers and operating systems to show users small snapshots of the files before they are opened. ... Cygnus's owner and president Gregory Swartz developed the technology laid out in the patent while working on IT consulting projects, McAndrews said. The company is looking for 'a reasonable royalty' as well as a court injunction preventing further infringement, he said. ... Cygnus applied for its patent (#7346850) in 2001. It covers a 'System and method for iconic software environment management' and was granted by the US Patent and Trademark Office in March of this year."

Comments

Re:Perfect time to know what Obama's take

[jav1231]

Thank the O he became president!

It was bad enough that we couldn't have an obviously NON-political thread that didn't mention someone's personal loathing of Bush now we're going to have 4 years of latent, homo-erotic references to Obama in threads about..oh I dunno, patent trolls!?

Re:Two words:

[yttrstein]

Who had live preview icons in an app in 1989 exactly? Source please.