A Florida company filed a patent infringement lawsuit against Apple because of the way OS X boots up.
According to Patently Apple, the patent was originally owned by LG Electronics, Inc., and the company bringing the suit is called Operating Systems Solutions, LLC. It is unclear at this time if LG is involved the lawsuit, or what relationship, if any, exists between the two companies.
The lawsuit states that Apple violates "at least Claim 1" of the OSS patent. The claim in question reads as follows:
"A method for fast booting a computer system, comprising the steps of: A. performing a power on self test (POST) of basic input output system (BIOS) when the system is powered on or reset is requested; B. checking whether a boot configuration information including a system booting state which was created while executing a previous normal booting process exists or not; C. storing the boot configuration information from execution of the POST operation before loading a graphic interface (GUI) program, based on the checking result; and D. loading the graphic user interface (GUI) program."
Patently Apple reports that Operating Systems Solutions, LLC, is not found in a simple Google search, and that "these types of cases are usually the specialty practice of patent trolls."
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MacMike
August 09, 2011 at 8:49am
Macs don't have a BIOS and never did. Since this process details very specific steps, I wonder if this would even apply to Apple? I think they could make the argument that the process doesn't apply to Macintosh computers and so therefore the suit is groundless.
CaptainV45
August 09, 2011 at 8:21am
Interesting that this pops up just weeks after This American Life on NPR had a whole show dedicated to Patent Trolls.
middlebass
August 08, 2011 at 3:27pm
I started by thinking that if you deleted the limiting phrase "from execution of the POST operation before loading a graphic interface (GUI) program", this might have applied to operating systems 30 years ago. Then it occurred to me that the patent simply sounds like nonsense because it doesn't work.
If the boot configuration that was just retrieved is valid you don't need to store it again until AFTER the GUI has been loaded.
purplemaizenjm
August 08, 2011 at 1:25pm
If they are suing apple of that then they should sue all the other companies that make computers. Because all computers Boot , and and have self processors... people are out to get apples money.. I will tell every one to just back off because they don't have a case over a simple sentence. That to me is Bull crap. And I will put money on that one.
