February 16, 2009 by Eddy Philipe
Getting sued is an occupational hazard in the tech industry but recently litigation fever seems to have risen to new heights with everyone from Facebook to Google being taken to court by. Generally speaking, these suits tend to be filed by small companies who have come up with something similar to one of the giants around the same time and have decided they may as well ask some questions, or simply chancers out for a quick buck. Either way they’re almost always American.
Not this time though, today a British company has gotten in on the act. Glasgow-based firm, Picsel has filed a suit against Apple to the US District court in Delaware, claiming that Apple have used their image rendering technology as a substantial part of the system the iPhone uses to update its screen.
The technology makes screen redrawing fast enough to use in a handheld device and applies to all its zooming and document viewing functions. Without it, the process would have been far too slow to be used properly on the iPhone. The trouble for Apple may be that Picsel are far from a fly by night operation. They have patented and registered all their products properly and have worked with big names like Nokia, Motorola and Palm in the past.
They are suing Apple for damages of three times their calculated losses. I don’t have a figure for you yet but I’d imagine it’s a lot of money.
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