Cygnus Systems, Inc.  has launched a lawsuit against Microsoft, Google, and Apple for the alleged infringement of a patent relating to the navigation and access of files based on representational thumbnails.

Specific products which are allegedly infringing are Apple’s Cover Flow feature, Google’s Chrome browser, and Microsoft’s Windows Vista Operating System.

The abstract from the Cygnus Systems patent describes the patent as

a method and system for storing, navigating, and accessing files within an operating system through the use of a graphical thumbnail representing the video display of the active document within the active application. 

The Cygnus system patent describes features similar to Windows Explorer and Apple’s finder, which both use scaled-down representations of documents to display thumbnails.

Google has a similar features within it’s Chrome browser allowing a thumbnail representation of web pages to be shown on screen.

Source: Ars Technica, Macworld

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Tags: Cygnus Systems

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