...prior art? The article is misleading as it states the patent was filed for in 2001. According to the patent office, "US Patent Issued on March 18, 2008", that is definitely not the case. It normally only takes about 6-12 months for a patent to be issued, and even if longer for some, definitely not 7 years. Looks like a get rich quick scheme to me, targeting the big players that would most likely just pay out some cash in order to squash the negative publicity, true or not.

I'll take your word for it. I think the longest I have ever seen was 1 1/2 years.

... the people who implemented similar technologies in the 1990s? This patent is, after all, from 2001 and thumbnail previews existed in the 1990s. I recall previews existing in the OS/2 Workplace Shell...

Indeed. Part of the quoted patent seems to describe the "thumbs.db" file used in Windows operating systems from well before 2001 to store thumbnail data. I'm not normally one to be on Microsoft's side, but Ballmer and Co. should be able to crush these trolls like the roaches they are just with that little bit of prior art.

Man... I *HATED* those files...
...
Anyway... hopefully this patent troll loses and doesn't get a damn thing.

...prior art? The article is misleading as it states the patent was filed for in 2001. According to the patent office, "US Patent Issued on March 18, 2008", that is definitely not the case. It normally only takes about 6-12 months for a patent to be issued, and even if longer for some, definitely not 7 years. Looks like a get rich quick scheme to me, targeting the big players that would most likely just pay out some cash in order to squash the negative publicity, true or not.

As to the main topic: What it illustrates is the need for the US patent system to be reformed. A company should not be able to...
...
...the life of a patent should be far shorter.

Patents were meant to prevent monopolies from snowballing new ideas they did not come up with into their own.

"Patents were meant to prevent monopolies from snowballing new ideas they did not come up with into their own.

Stupid, stupid, stupid, money-grubbing POS lawyers...

People like these are helping to make this nation ( U.S. ) collapse from within.

It's an interesting question, though. Would the U.S. collapsing from within be good or bad for the rest of the world? Probably bad for me here in Oklahoma. But there's a lot of world outside our borders.

I'd assume that U.S. companies and U.S. politicians are smart enough to only let things collapse a little (until the problem is obvious) before the patent laws were changed to prevent further collapse

You mean like the Thumbs.db thing in Windows you can't turn off either?

From a documentary I watched the name was from GNU open source arena.

I could be wrong, they are also Microsfot Gold Certified Partner as well.

I am afraid this could spell doom for this company and what their motives are for initiating this type of lawsuit.

Cygnus Systems, Inc., a networking company based in Michigan, got into the holiday spirit by suing Microsoft, Apple, and Google for violating a patent it was recently awarded, which covers the navigation and access of files based on representational thumbnails.

Cygnus (not to be confused with Cygnus Solutions, which gave us open source tools like gcc and Cygwin)

This piece has been edited to reflect the fact that Cygnus Systems, Inc.â€"the small networking company that filed this suitâ€"has nothing to do with Cygnus Solutions, which produced open source tools like gcc and Cygwin before merging into Red Hat in 1999.

I'll take your word for it. I think the longest I have ever seen was 1 1/2 years.

This is getting ridiculous.

...Even though the Christian part of the world is all about forgiveness and love and pink ponies during the holidays (or, at least, they ought to be)... A company should not be able to sit for years on a pending patent without sending notice to possible infringers in the meantime or demonstrating they put the tech to use.