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Apple Sued Over OS X Quick Boot
An anonymous reader writes "With a patent originally owned by LG in tow, a Florida based company called Operating Systems Solutions LLC recently filed suit against Apple claiming that OS X's use of quick booting infringes the aforementioned patent."
The company in question is a bit suspicious — having formed very recently — and so others are speculating it was created for a proxy battle against Apple by LG.
These patent lawsuits are getting out of hand.
You make it sound like they weren't _already_ out of hand.
Everyone slings patent shit around. Kodak had basically patented putting an LCD on a camera and using that instead of a viewfinder, an idea that had certainly been around prior to Kodak's patent and had possibly been implemented before then, too. I'd have to go back and check. Yes, Apple is slinging stupid patent crap around. So is LG. So are just about all the major players in the industry, and everyone needs to knock it the hell off. Google is about the only one who hasn't gone willy-nilly with patents as they seem more interested in violating them than attacking with them.
Taste of their own medicine? I take it you completely forgot about Nokia suing them, and Kodak before that? Or how about the company that sued them on the basis of the iPod's playlist?
To say that "Apple started it!" is extremely childish and naive.
But in the case of HTC and Samsung, Apple most certainly started it. It's like an elementary school. Some 6th grader beats up on a 4th grader, so he goes and picks on the 2nd graders. The 4th grader in question is no less a bully simply because he was bullied himself.
When Apple counter-sued Nokia, that was just perfectly reasonable self-defense. Nokia was the bad guy there. When they sued HTC with a collection of completely bogus patents simply because HTC had fewer patents for self-defense, Apple was being evil.
In the past few years we've seen some of the bigger and better-known names in tech resort to patent trolling simply because they find themselves falling behind their competitors due to a failure to innovate. Nokia, Microsoft and TiVo are all guilty. Apple, however, is about the only big name to start patent trolling before they hit their decline. They're doing it while on top. In that particular way, Apple's patent lawsuits are unique in the industry.
So while they certainly did not start the patent wars, they have definitely distinguished themselves with their misbehavior as of late and they undeniably did start the fights between HTC and Samsung.