Illinois-based Software Restore Solutions has filed a patent infringement lawsuit against Apple, claiming that the company's Disk Utility application violates a patent on automatic computer configuration repair. The lawsuit was filed Wednesday in the Northern District of Illinois.

The patent in question, US Patent #5,832,511, is for a "Workgroup network manager for controlling the operation of workstations within the computer network." Certainly, Disk Utility does not automatically manage the configuration of client systems on a network. However, Software Restore Solutions alleges that the application, which can repair the permissions of certain system or user files, does violate claim 32 of the patent:

"A method of computer management automatically resetting a computer to a preferred configuration by executing system configuration instructions in dependence upon a comparison of prior computer status to the current condition of the computer...."

Since Disk Utility is an included part of every install of Mac OS X, the lawsuit targets every version of the OS as well as products that are sold with it, including every Mac for the last decade.

Lest you think Apple was Software Restore Solutions' only target, however, the company unsuccessfully sued 26 software vendors last year over the '511 patent, including Apple, Adobe, Autodesk, Capcom, Citrix, Corel, Intuit, Sega, Skype, and THQ, among others. The case was closed after all the defendants were dismissed, some with prejudice.

Software Restore Solutions acquired the '511 patent from Acacia, another apparent patent troll, which acquired the patent from original inventor Beck Systems. Litigating the '511 patent appears to be Software Restore Solutions' only business activity.