Microsoft Served with Lawsuit Over Live Tiles
Oct 31, 2012, 10:53 AM by Eric M. Zeman
Microsoft has been hit with a patent infringement lawsuit from a small Maine-based company called SurfCast. SurfCast alleges that Microsoft is violating its intellectual property with the Live Tiles aspect of the Windows Phone 8 and Windows 8 user interface. "We developed the concept of Tiles in the 1990s, which was ahead of its time. Microsoft's Live Tiles are the centerpiece of Microsoft's new Operating Systems and are covered by our patent," said SurfCast CEO Ovid Santoro. The thrust of SurfCast's argument concerns its patent number 403, which is for "presenting information from variety of sources on a display device." Microsoft has its own patent for Live Tiles, but SurfCast argues that its patent predates Microsoft's and serves as prior art. SurfCast filed the lawsuit with the U.S. District Court for the District of Maine. Microsoft has yet to respond publicly to the lawsuit.
Comments
Don't know what to make of this
http://www.surfcast.com/index.php »
No indication that these annoying twits do anything with their patents except sue people. IMO, that makes their trolling worse, even if MS is a jerk.
WP7 was on phones only. Windows 8 resides "on the user's desktop."
They were actually quite forward thinking and me...
(continues)
Or, microsoft could just buy this company, fire everybody, and disband them.
I like the second option better - Patent trolls should be destroyed.