Apple was named along with 12 other PC makers in a patent-infringement lawsuit two companies filed last week, according to a report Monday.
The lawsuit claims Apple and others infringed on two patents covering a so-called “safety box” limiting an application’s access to computer resources.
The lawsuit is asking for a court injunction plus unspecified damages.
Global Innovation Technology Holdings (GITH), the Florida-based exclusive patents licensee and patent owner Information Protection and Authentication of Texas (IPAT) filed the 12-page lawsuit last week in a south Florida federal court, according to Apple Insider.
The lawsuit claims Apple “has infringed or continues to infringe on one or more of the claims.” U.S. patent No. 5,311,591 covers a “Computer system security method and apparatus for creating and using program authorization information data structures” was filed in 1992, granted in 1994 and continued a year later.
Program Authorization Information controls what computer resources are available to applications. The lawsuit alleges Apple sells hardware and software “for protecting and/or authenticating information.
Along with Apple, HP, Dell, Acer, Gateway, Lenovo, Alienware, American Future Technology, Panasonic, Motion Computing and Asus.
In December, GITH and IPAT sued Microsoft and five other companies alleging they violated the same patents.
Ed Sutherland is a veteran technology journalist who first heard of Apple when they grew on trees, Yahoo was run out of a Stanford dorm and Google was an unknown upstart. Since then, Sutherland has covered the whole technology landscape, concentrating on tracking the trends and figuring out the finances of large (and small) technology companies.
