The mobile world is no stranger to litigation, and 2012 has been a year pockmarked with legal battles of all shapes and sizes. While most of the action has centered around Apple and Samsung, today papers are being served on Microsoft, which just a few days ago unveiled its new Windows 8 and Windows Phone 8 platforms.

The complainant, SurfCast, is a self-proclaimed operating-system designer headquartered in Portland, Maine. The complaint centers around Windows’ use of Live Tiles in the Metro Windows 8 Store Style layout, which SurfCast claims it developed. The company’s website says the “tiles” it designed -depicted in this piece’s title image- “can be thought of as dynamically updating icons. A Tile is different from an icon because it can be both selectable and live — containing refreshed content that provides a real-time or near-real-time view of the underlying information.”

Specifically, SurfCast alleges that Microsoft “has infringed and is infringing Surfcast’s U.S. Patent No. 6,724,403 with its Windows 8 and Surface products, among others,” and that “Microsoft had knowledge of the ’403 patent at least as early as April 21, 2009,” and also when it submitted its own patent application related to Windows Phone live tiles.

Microsoft has not yet responded to, nor offered comment on, the lawsuit.

___

Source: TheNextWeb via CNET, SurfCast