Cygnus Systems Inc, a small Michigan company, was recently awarded a patent for thumbnail previews of a file, and celebrated by immediately suing the biggest names in town.

Cygnus has named Microsoft's Vista, Apple's OSX and Cover Flow, and Google's Chrome as infringing on their thumbnail preview patent filed back in 2001. Plenty of other products would fall under the scope of the patent including all modern web browsers, Adobe's Photoshop, and even web apps like Flickr.

This is one of those patents for an idea rather than a product, and might have even been filed with lawsuits in mind. It's telling that they went after the big dogs first, and have no claim that their company has actually been harmed by any patent violation. I don't imagine they'll get very far against the combined legal might of Microsoft, Apple, and Google, anyway. [Ars Technica]

Send an email to Dan Nosowitz, the author of this post, at dnosowitz@gizmodo.com.