“A little-known corporation from Newport Beach, California is suing Mac maker Apple Inc., alleging that a new version of the company’s iChat video conferencing software infringes on patented technology through its use of custom video backdrops,” Kasper Jade reports for AppleInsider.
“In the 6-page complaint, filed Wednesday in the United States District Court for the Southern District of Illinois, Digital Background Corporation claims that the Apple software infringes on its 1998 patent entitled ‘Real-Time Method of Digitally Altering a Video Data Stream to Remove Portions of the Original Image and Substitute Elements to Create a New Image,'” Jade reports.
“iChat 4.0, which shipped last month as part of the Mac OS X 10.5 Leopard operating system, also contains ‘a ‘backdrop’ feature which takes a picture of the background, replaces it with a photo or video of choice using a video frame storage and computer system to modify and then display the new image,’ the suit explains, without going into further detail,” Jade reports.
“Digital Background Corporation has asked the Court to award it a permanent injunction enjoining Apple from selling copies of Leopard that include the software, damages resulting from the infringement, treble those damages because DBC believes the infringement has been willful, and attorneys fees,” Jade reports.
More in the full article, including screenshots of the products in question, here.