Man, now Steve Jobs knows how Bill Gates must’ve felt.

See, there’s no doubt that Apple’s got a lot of sweet and innovative products in their arsenal.  The iPod, the iPhone, the iMac, and so on and so forth right on down the line.  But one of Apple’s greatest innovations, the onboard camera, may actually have been stolen.

At least, that’s what the folks out at St. Clair Intellectual Property Consultants are saying.  Dig the word:

St. Clair acquired the digital camera patents and technology in 1995 from failed Personal Computer Cameras. Since then, it’s sued Canon, Nikon, Sony and others over several of the camera-related patents it controls — including patent No. 5,138,459, entitled “Electronic Still Camera with Direct Personal Computer.”

And the result?  So far, St. Clair has won a LOT of cases.  Have they ever…they took Canon for thirty five million and Sony for twenty five.  Now it’s Apple’s turn.

With this kind of precedent, and these kinds of resources available to them–sixty million pays a LOT of lawyers!–maybe Apple would do well to settle.  Like now.

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