December 30, 2008 by James Oliver
Everybody loves an underdog but this is ridiculous. A small, Michigan based firm called Cygnus Systems inc. is suing Microsoft, Google and Apple, amongst others for copyright violation. What specifically is their beef with the world’s most powerful companies? Well, it turns out that the tiny software maker was recently awarded a patent for thumbnail previews of files. They applied for the patent way back in 2001. Now, of course, thumbnails are everywhere, a fact that Cygnus intends to cash in on.
However, it’s unlikely that they’ll get terribly far with it. Leaving aside the fact that these companies could probably hire every lawyer in America to fight this suit if they wanted to, there doesn’t appear to be any reasonable claim that they were actually harmed by the patent violation. Plus, thumbnails are everywhere – they’d literally need to sue hundreds of companies.
Far be it from me to impugn their motives, though this suit could easily be called frivolous, some might even accuse them of filing the patent with this lawsuit in mind. Indeed, it’s a little suspect that they went for the biggest (and richest) companies first.
To be honest, if I was in the Google legal department right now, I wouldn’t be unduly worried.
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