<![CDATA[Gizmodo: frivolous lawsuits]]> http://tags.gizmodo.com/assets/base/img/thumbs140x140/gizmodo.com.png <![CDATA[Gizmodo: frivolous lawsuits]]> http://gizmodo.com/tag/frivolouslawsuits http://gizmodo.com/tag/frivolouslawsuits <![CDATA[Tiny Company Sues Apple, Microsoft, and Google, Has Balls the Size of Texas]]> 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]

]]> http://gizmodo.com/index.php?op=postcommentfeed&postId=5119074&view=rss&microfeed=true <![CDATA[Major Nelson Xbox Live Status Updates Silenced by BS Lawsuit]]> Alright, so even though Microsoft is giving everyone a free Xbox Live Arcade game because they feel bad about the outages—or want to stem a bubbling revolt—a trio of Texan greedmongers sued over it. Result: No more Xbox Live status updates from Major Nelson, whose mouth has now been covered with legal red tape. Guess we'll know it's fixed when it's fixed now. Thanks, assholes, we hope it's worth the fat pot of nothing you'll get out of it. [Major Nelson via Kotaku]

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