NSSplitView Trademark Dispute
The Delhi High Court has declared that Apple cannot use the term “Split View” in India. The complaint, filed by Microsoft vendor Vyooh, claimed that it had developed similar functionality in its Splitview software in 2006, with largely the same functionality.
“SplitView is not descriptive but had acquired distinctiveness and was associated exclusively with the Indian software developer,” Mustafa Safiyuddin, chairman of Legasis Partners, said. “This order will send a strong message to multinational software companies to respect the intellectual property rights of Indian software developers. It also signifies the importance of trademarks in the software field.”
Rosyna Keller and Alastair Houghton note that NeXT had used that name at least as far back as the 1994 OpenStep specification.
Update (2016-04-11): Christopher Lloyd:
lol, there was an NXSplitView which predates OpenStep even
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I could be wrong, but I don't believe that the case is over the NSSplitView class, but rather the iOS "Split View" feature on iPads, called "Split View" by Apple at e.g. https://developer.apple.com/library/ios/documentation/WindowsViews/Conceptual/AdoptingMultitaskingOniPad/
