it's not a joke

This news from Christmas day is even more flabbergasting than Amazon's One-Click: [via Digital Majority]

Indiana based Cygnus Systems has filed a lawsuit against the three giants Microsoft, Apple and Google claiming that they are infringing on a patent owned by them.

The patent is related to file preview technology which gives the user a view of a file before it is opened.

Yes, that's correct. The USPTO granted a patent for "file preview", failing to recognise prior art relating to the idea and even its obviousness, or triviality. This is also covered here:

A small Indiana company has sued tech heavyweights Microsoft, Apple, and Google, claiming that it holds the patent on a common file preview feature used by browsers and operating systems to show users small snapshots of the files before they are opened.

Believe it or not, this so-called 'innovation' was conceived in 2001, or at least filed at this very late stage.

According to McAndrews, Cygnus's owner and president Gregory Swartz developed the technology in his spare time.

Cygnus applied for its patent in 2001. It purports to cover a "System and method for iconic software environment management".

There is prior art. Getting a patent and actually selling a products are separate things. The latter is damaged by the former, which benefits society in no way (unless one is a lawyer). ⬆

KDE had file previews many years ago