Microsoft has filed suit against Barnes & Noble, creators of the Nook and Nook Color e-readers, as well as the manufacturers of those devices. The companies allegedly infringe on a number of patents filed between 1998 and 2005, generally applying to UI elements associated with browsing and downloading information. Like many patents from that period (for example those cited by Paul Allen in last year's omnibus suit) these are quite broad in their specificity, claiming methods that seem now to be no-brainer approaches to the task described. The larger question is, as before, is whether these patents are legitimately unique intellectual property — but as before, the larger question is being deferred for now, and in the mean time, we're suing each other over the placement of download status bars. Microsoft's line is that Barnes & Noble, unlike game HTC, Amazon, and others, has failed to license these methods (yet uses them anyway, bold as brass), and now faces stern reprimand.
Source: http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/Techcrunch/~3/5T4e7UoiKFk/
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