Apple Gets Sued by Florida Company

Coming as an affluent to the ever flowing stream of lawsuits on the IT industry is an action against Apple, over a patent originally filed by LG back in the late 20th century, filed by a company based in Florida.

There are things that are fairly common on the IT industry and, unfortunately, lawsuits seem to be one of them.

Of course, the very existence of the patent system is more or less a guarantee that corporations will come to metaphorical blows over who owns what intellectual property.

One of the companies known worldwide for the many lawsuits it is involved in, over things big and small, is none other than Apple.

Though it caught the attention of the media for gaining leadership of the smartphone market and releasing a sub-$1000 iMac, the outfit is seeing something different now.

Apparently, a company stationed in Florida and called OSS (and possibly an LG spinoff, according to the folks over at 9to5mac) sued Apple over a patent filed by LG back in 1999.

The patent is for “ method for quickly booting a personal computer system using boot configuration information on memory and the attached devices that was created and saved in a hard disk at the preceding boot process.”

Apple itself is known to have started legal battles against most, if not all, Android manufacturers, so hearing of it being called to court instead is comparatively rare, all things considered.

“Apple sells or offers to sell within this district, computer systems, including but not limited to the MacBook Pro, that utilize the Mac OSX operating system that infringes at least claim 1 of the OSS [Operating System Solutions] Patent,” says the filing.

So far, Apple and LG have actually been getting along fairly well, having even signed a $500 million display agreement some years back. Just what this new development means for their relationship remains to be seen.