MIT, Imaging Firm Sue 94 Companies over Technology

BOSTON, Jan. 7 -- The Massachusetts Institute of Technology and Electronics For Imaging Inc., a California company, have filed a lawsuit in Texas claiming that 94 companies -- including Microsoft Corp. -- illegally used their patented image editing software.

MIT says Electronics For Imaging (EFI) of Foster City, Calif., has an exclusive license for the software, developed by MIT professor William Schreiber and used in products such as photo scanners and digital cameras. The patent expires this year. In the lawsuit, filed last week in a federal court near an EFI office in Texarkana, Texas, EFI demands that the other companies pay license fees for the past six years. An EFI spokesman would not say how much the fees are.

EFI won control of the patent in 1990 and has licensed it to 16 other companies, including Apple Computer Corp. and Xerox Corp. The software design firm shares the revenue with MIT.