If you’re read this expecting to see Linus Torvalds and Steve Jobs exchange body blows in court, read the headline again: that homophone can be confusing, the ‘e’ matters and the company we’re talking about here is Linex, a Florida company that licenses wireless technology.
Even so, Linex and Apple are revving up to go to court, and if Linex has its way, the import of all MacBooks will be banned, along with Apple’s Airport Extreme and Time Capsule products.
The patent dispute lawsuit has been filed in US District Court in Delaware against Apple alongside HP, Aurba Networks, Meru Networks and Ruckus Wireless. Linex is looking for monetary damages in regards to the violation of this patent, which basically just talks about a way to use multiple WiFi antennas to make signals more reliable.
Knowing how most of these lawsuits go, your MacBook is probably pretty safe, and Apple will soon sweep this under the rug. Even so, I bet you did a double take at the headline.
John Brownlee is a writer for Fast Company, and a contributing writer here at CoM. He has also written for Wired, Playboy, Boing Boing, Popular Mechanics, VentureBeat, and Gizmodo. He lives in Boston with his wife and two parakeets. You can follow him here on Twitter.
