It seems that the wheel is turning for Apple because the giant from Cupertino was acted in court for infringing a patent on fast computer booting. The patent originally belonged to LG, which sold it to the American company Operating Systems Solutions, which filed a lawsuit against Apple. Apple is accused of infringing the system originally patented by LG in Mac OS X and the Macs launched on the market by implementing a fast boot system similar or identical to the one described in the patent. Not a few times, Apple has been praised for the reduced boot time of Macs, and it seems that the technology implemented by them could be "inspired" by the patents of others.
The court's document on Count 1 states that "Apple sells or offers to sell within this district, computer systems, including but not limited to the MacBook Pro, that utilize the Mac OSX operating system that infringes at least claim 1 of the OSS [Operating System Solutions] Patent.” A method for fast booting a computer system, comprising the steps of: A. performing a power on self test (POST) of basic input output system (BIOS) when the system is powered on or reset is requested; B. checking whether a boot configuration information including a system booting state which was created while executing a previous normal booting process exists or not; C. storing the boot configuration information from execution of the POST operation before loading a graphic interface (GUI) program, based on the checking result; and D. loading the graphic user interface (GUI) program.
Apple is not the first company to implement a fast boot system in its own computers, many manufacturers already do this and if the system used by Apple infringes this patent then it is possible that other manufacturers will be targeted by lawsuits in the future. The Apple company has so far sued several manufacturers of Android terminals for infringing patents for iDevices and iOS, but now the company from Cupertino is being summoned to court to prove that it has not infringed the patents of to others.
