Macintosh applications-on-RISC house Quorum Software Systems Inc, Menlo Park, California, last week filed a suit against Apple Computer Inc seeking to counter allegations of patent and copyright infringement made by Apple. The suit is intended to head off a legal attack against it by Apple which Quorum believes is in the works. The action stems from a letter Apple sent Quorum’s lawyers on March 17 accusing it of infringing its intellectual property rights. On May 1 Apple also revoked Quorum’s privileges as an Apple certified developer, calling it an error and returning its $600 sign-up fee. The March 17 letter was signed by Apple vice-president and Macintosh software architecture general manager Roger Heinen. Four days earlier Apple had signed a confidential agreement enabling it to review the object code of Quorum’s Latitude and Equal products, a negotiated response to an earlier Apple demand that Quorum send its Latitude object and source code to Apple’s outside litigation attorneys. The Heinen letter claims Latitude appears specifically to infringe Apple’s patents and copyrights. This is evident from a cursory review of the object code… For example, the Latitude product running on a Sun workstation violates Apple’s patents on pull-down menus and Colour QuickDraw. Quorum maintains that it relied solely on Motif or Open Look for the pull-down menus and uses Adobe Systems Inc Display PostScript or SunSoft Inc Network-extensible Windowing System for screen rendering and therefore could hardly have infringed Apple’s patent or copyrights. Heinen’s letter also says that We believe Latitude incorporates copyrighted material of Apple. For example, Latitude was developed by violating, or inducing others to violate, a number of licensing and confidentiality agreements by making use of information provided to developers only on a restricted basis and subject to a number of conditions. Quorum counters that Apple cannot assert any ownership of application source code created by independent software vendors. Quorum is asking the federal courts in California to rule that it has not infringed on Apple’s turf, and declare Latitude marketable with no infringement liability and to enjoin Apple from making further assertions.
