I was planning to use a dock menu similiar in looks and behavior to the Mac OS X dock menu in an application. It seems that apple have patented their dock about a year ago.
I've seen some websites that use a similiar dock, the article also lists a few applications that use a similiar style. What is the legal stand of this? Is this a violation of the patent?
Software patents are only a problem if the company decides to exercise them. If you are just building an application that will not see widespread use (i.e. in the vein of Microsoft Office), and you will not bother them too much from a competitive standpoint, they may not bother you..
However, Apple apparently views the dock as their "distinguishing feature," with respect to their OS, so they might start getting protective about it. Apple has a long history of being proprietary, so this may be their way of saying, "We're different."
These kinds of docks have been around for awhile, and the software industry hasn't imploded on them yet. Apple could have issued patent pending warnings against other users of the patent prior to this, but I have heard nothing about that.
As with anything else legal, you can choose to accept the risk, or you can choose to do something else. The usual IANAL disclaimers apply. I agree with David Thornley; it might be worthwhile consulting someone who actually knows something about these things.
Find yourself a patent expert who specializes in software. You're going to need one.
I haven't seen a software patent yet that I could understand without a great deal of work. What actually matters is not the title or summary or whatever, but the claims. These are normally written in a bastardized language combining the worst properties of legalese, English, and techspeak, and perhaps with a few more of its own. However, it is essential to understand them.
Apple likely didn't patent the Dock itself, but some aspect or aspects of it. I can't tell without understanding the patent claims. The patent then may well have been misreported, because for most people the claims are so opaque that they go with parts of the patent text they can actually understand. Many patents aren't nearly as bad as they look.
So, the good news is that what you want to do may well not be patented. The bad news is what you're going to have to understand in order to find that out.
There are several implementations of similar docks (just search Google for "linux dock") and none of them have been sued over it yet. I think it would be fairly safe for you to use on your web site.
So long as you didn't claim to be Apple or use Apple branding, I wouldn't be too worried.