Former Sun’s CEO Can Handle Steve Jobs’ Lawsuit Threats

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The mobile business is definitely an interesting environment to watch especially every once in a while we’re getting to see conflicts like the Nokia vs Apple or the Apple vs HTC lawsuits. Talking on his personal blog about technology-related lawsuits between giant corporations was Jonathan Schwartz, the former President and CEO of Sun, and he revealed some of his own patent-related experiences with Apple and Microsoft.

One interesting conversation Jonathan Swartz had was with Steve Jobs after the former unveiled a Linux-based desktop called Project Looking Glass in 2003. Steve Jobs called him to tell him that the graphical effects of said project were “stepping all over Apple’s IP” and therefore Apple would have just sued Sun would they have commercialized it.

Here’s what happened next according to the former Sun CEO:

My response was simple. “Steve, I was just watching your last presentation, and Keynote looks identical to Concurrence – do you own that IP?” Concurrence was a presentation product built by Lighthouse Design, a company I’d help to found and which Sun acquired in 1996. Lighthouse built applications for NeXTSTEP, the Unix based operating system whose core would become the foundation for all Mac products after Apple acquired NeXT in 1996. Steve had used Concurrence for years, and as Apple built their own presentation tool, it was obvious where they’d found inspiration. “And last I checked, MacOS is now built on Unix. I think Sun has a few OS patents, too.” Steve was silent.

So Steve can be silenced! Unfortunately HTC will not have it that easy which is weird since HTC has been making phones long before Apple, isn’t that right?

Jonathan Swartz has also had a similar meeting with Microsoft’s Bill Gates and Steve Ballmer regarding Open Office but also Windows. Microsoft asked for royalties for every Open Office download at which point Sun asked for money for every Windows copy sold. The meeting ended up in a draw but the point is that neither Microsoft nor Sun sued each other for Intellectual Property aka patents.

We’ll be looking forward to see how the courts feel about these suits in the mobile business then and we’ll definitely be interested to see who will win.