14 DAY TRIAL // In what appears to be a new case of patent trolling, a company called TriDim Innovations has aimed its guns at Apple for allegedly infringing on two of their inventions relating to 3D GUI workspaces.
TriDim Innovations alleges that Apple has infringed on U.S. Patents No. 5,838,326 and No. 5,847,709, which describe a system for moving document objects in a 3-D workspace, and a 3-D document workspace with focus, immediate and tertiary spaces, respectively.
Cover Flow, Time Machine, and Safari Mobile are all named in the suit as infringing products that carry graphical user interfaces (GUIs) with 3D workspaces.
While the three products indeed have such characteristics, the allegation that Apple willfully used these elements without buying and / or leasing them is questionable. For example, Apple bought Cover Flow from Steel Skies almost a decade ago.
Court papers
The suit filing (uploaded to Scribd) by one Mikey Campbell, states:
“Apple products that infringe one or more claims of the ’326 Patent include, but are not limited to, Apple’s products that (1) use the iOS7 and iOS8 operating systems and include the Safari browser, (2) incorporate the “Cover Flow” user interface, and (3) include “Time Machine.” Apple is directly infringing, literally infringing, and/or infringing the ’326 Patent under the doctrine of equivalents.”
Just another day in Silicon Valley
Apple isn’t by far the only company using 3D GUI implementations to assist file management, and browsing, which are essentially the only two case-scenarios for Apple’s use of the aforementioned technologies. In fact, lawsuits like these are filed practically every other day.
However, we also can’t rule out that Apple has borrowed some of this technology without actually asking (or simply without knowing who invented it), something that every tech company has done at least once at a certain point in time.
TriDim is seeking unspecified damages that will likely be calculated during the trial period.