Apple is the latest company to be sued by a so called IP company (Immaterial/Intellectual Property), also known as patent trolls. IP Innovation LLC has namely sued Apple for $20 million for wilfully infringing on a patent on how tabs are used in an operating system, which Apple in fact does quite a lot with OS X. The patent in question, “User Interface with Multiple Workspaces for Sharing Display System Objects,” is simply about how change views of objects on a workspace. The user replaces one view with another which in turn hides the first, and can change back in between using tabs. There is no specific infringement mentioned, but say that OS X is infringing in several ways through its applications (Finder, Safari, Spotlight and more?). A conviction would lead to Apple will not be able to sell or even continue developing operating systems on the OS X foundation without a major rewrite.
