This doesn't sound like it would cover sudo to me, or even a GUI-wrapper for sudo. While I am not a patent attorney, I have been hacking on sudo for the past 15+ years.

My reading of the patent indicates that it is geared towards GUI-based environments where the user may need to perform some action (such as setting the clock in a control panel) that requires increased privileges. The actual "invention" appears to be that the user is able to perform an action as a different user without having to type in the name of that other user when authenticating. One example given in that patent is the ability to click on a name in a list of privileged users as opposed to having to type in a user name.

Sudo simply doesn't work this way. When a command is run via sudo the user is actively running the command as a different user. What is described in the patent is a mechanism whereby an application or the operating system detects that an action needs to be run with increased privileges and automatically prompts the user with a list of potential users that have the appropriate privilege level to perform the task.