Apple Hit with Patent Lawsuit Over Disk Utility

Justice ScalesSoftware Restore Solutions has filed a lawsuit against Apple alleging the Mac, iPhone and iPad maker is infringing on its patents with the Disk Utility application that ships with every copy of Mac OS X. The lawsuit was filed on August 17 in U.S. District Court in Northern Illinois.

The company claimed Disk Utility steps on the toes of a network management patent it has held since 1998, and that Apple intentionally ignored the patent. Apple has been including the Disk Utility application with Mac OS X ever since the OS first shipped in 2001.

Disk Utility is an application that helps find and repair some system and disk-related problems, handles disk formatting and partitioning, and can create disk images.

Software Restore Solutions isn’t a stranger to Apple-related lawsuits. The company also sued Apple and several other companies such as Adobe, IBM, Citrix, Skype, and Electronic Arts in 2010 over claims that the companies were infringing on its networked workstation management patents.

The company is asking for triple damages in its current case against Apple.

[Thanks to Electronista for the heads up.]