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Apple sued over OS software-permissions patents

updated 03:45 pm EST, Mon January 19, 2009

Apple sued over OS patents


Apple has become involved in yet another lawsuit, adding to its lengthy list of ongoing legal battles, with a patent infringement case filed by Information Protection and Authentication of Texas (IPAT) and Global Innovation Technology Holdings (GITH) that accuses several different computer-makers of using protected technology for determining software permissions. The patent holder and exclusive licensee demand a jury trial and hope to achieve monetary compensation, legal fees and an injunction.

The patents involve a system monitor that can limit the resources that any application is able to use. The various restrictions are organized into program authorization information (PAIs), which can only be modified by the owner or another user with administrative privileges. When a program is used, the system monitors the PAIs to ensure that the rules are not broken. If the application attempts to reach beyond its predefined limits, the execution is halted.

The filing asserts that Apple "has infringed and continues to infringe one or more claims of the '591 and '717 patents by making, using, providing, offering to sell, and selling ... hardware and/or software for protecting and/or authenticating information." The company is further accused of contributing the the infringement of the patents and actively inducing others to do the same.

The plaintiffs made similar accusations against a number of other manufacturers including Acer, Alienware, American Future Technology, Asus, Dell, Fujitsu, Gateway, HP, Lenovo, Motion Computing and Panasonic.


by MacNN Staff

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 patents, lawsuit, Apple

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  1. Rolando_jose

    Fresh-Faced Recruit

    Joined: Jan 2006

    +1
    01/19, 04:59pm | report spam | Reply |

    Fishing

    It's what it sounds to me.

  1. howiethemacguy

    Fresh-Faced Recruit

    Joined: Sep 2007

    +1
    01/19, 05:38pm | report spam | (1 reply) Reply |

    It's like clockwork

    Once a little piss ant company that no one has ever heard of needs to make some quick cash, they sue Apple. From the description, they're describing something that has been in UNIX for a very long time. They can't possibly own this technology. Why would they wait so long to sue if they did?

  1. jonbwfc1

    Fresh-Faced Recruit

    Joined: Nov 2003

    +1
    01/19, 06:15pm | report spam | Reply |

    Sue'em, Grabbit and Run

    Gotta agree with Howie. I was using a Unix permissions system just like the patent describes the best part of 30 years ago. Did the US patent office simply give up on the idea of 'prior art' or something?

    Comment buried. Show
  1. testudo

    Fresh-Faced Recruit

    Joined: Aug 2001

    -10
    01/19, 06:45pm | report spam | (1 reply) Reply |

    Re: it's like clockwork

    Yes, because they ONLY sue Apple. Get a life, these guys sue everybody. You just don't hear about it because you get your news from MacNN. If you read MSNN, you'd think everyone was suing MS. If you read GoogleNN, you'd think everyone was suing Google...

  1. testudo

    Fresh-Faced Recruit

    Joined: Aug 2001

    -6
    01/19, 06:47pm | report spam | Reply |

    permissions

    Actually, this is less about unix permissions and more like sandboxing. Its all about what can and can't an application use/read/write/execute, which is different than standard Unix permissions, which are all about what the user can and can't do.

    So, the question is "where did Sun get its tech and ideas for Java runtimes?". That's where you should be looking for previous tech.

  1. txturbo

    Fresh-Faced Recruit

    Joined: Jun 2008

    -2
    01/19, 07:42pm | report spam | Reply |

    Seems fair to me

    If Apple is using this technology and did not do a proper patent search then shame on them.

    Then again if the IP holder just waited years, knowing that the IP was being violated and did nothing about it then they should be forced to forfeit there claim.

  1. LeoNobilis

    Fresh-Faced Recruit

    Joined: Nov 2007

    -2
    01/19, 08:25pm | report spam | Reply |

    Squalid fleas!

    Who are these obnoxious parasites (those in question harassing Apple once again, this time on the premises of OS X's intrinsic security)? Do I understand it right that these cretins demand that the virus-proof nature of Macintosh and OS X be eliminated? Curse them, I'd spit in their faces if the opportunity arose, bloody mosquitoes!
    That one dares to demean to such behaviour!..

  1. Guest

    Fresh-Faced Recruit

    Joined: Nov 1999

    +2
    01/19, 10:38pm | report spam | Reply |

    testudo...

    it is the same as UNIX permissions, have you never used a UNIX system before (and not like jurassic park if thats all you know..). When a person runs an application, it runs with THE USERS PERMISSIONS, hence user space permissions affect programs. This is why you have things such as sudo, that let you run a program as another user with greater permissions.All sandboxing does, beyond kernel level memory protection which has been in every OS for god knows how long, is create an operating environment which the program is run as a user that only has permissions to access those locations allowed - It cannot READ beyond those areas even, cannot even see that they exist. This is similar to why you run Apache as the Apache user - then Apache can ONLY write to locations it owns and has permission to use. You then grant it READ only access to your files to serve. Not that hard... and ages older than this patent

  1. testudo

    Fresh-Faced Recruit

    Joined: Aug 2001

    -9
    01/20, 12:01am | report spam | (1 reply) Reply |

    Re: testudo

    Yes I've run unix systems. And I know how permissions work ( gee just read my comment). And you aren't reading of correctly. As I said (and you repeated) standard unix permissions are all about what the USER can do. The patent is about defining what an APP can do.

    You're apache example shows this as well. You are defining what the apache user can do, not what the app can do. This, if you were to run apache under a different user, it would have different rights.

    And just as obvious. If this was the same as unix permissions, it wouldn't get this far.

    (note that I'm not defending the patent just pointing out it isn't what most claim it is)

  1. appleuzr

    Fresh-Faced Recruit

    Joined: Aug 2006

    +6
    01/20, 07:08am | report spam | (1 reply) Reply |

    AMEN!

    Testudo has used, done, raped, violated, licked, poked, touched, controlled, spoken with, seen, bent over, witnessed, driven, jumped, it all! Anything you can think of, he's done it and if you've done it, he did it better and it was easier for him too. And he's going to give you his opinion on it, and you know what it's going to spot on! And if you give your opinion on his opinion, he's going to give you his opinion on your opinion that you gave him about his first opinion.

    He might even quote you and for that you should feel flattered! Because for someone who has done EVERYTHING and SEEN EVERYTHING to quote you, well... we should all feel privileged to have been a part of that.

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