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Small Devs Attacked Over In-App Purchase Button Patent
Thornburg writes with this excerpt from a story at MacRumors:
"Yesterday, we received word from Rob Gloess of Computer LogicX ... that he had received legal documents threatening a patent lawsuit over the use of an 'upgrade' button in the lite version of his application linking users to the App Store where they could purchase the full version. 'Our app, Mix & Mash, has the common model of a limited free, lite, version and a full version that contains all the features. We were told that the button that users click on to upgrade the app, or rather link to the full version on the app store was in breach of US patent no 7222078. We couldn't believe it, the upgrade button!?!' The patent in question was filed in December 2003 as part of series of continuations on earlier patent applications dating back to 1992. The patent is credited to Dan Abelow, who sold his extensive portfolio of patents to holding firm Lodsys in 2004. Lodsys is indeed the company issuing the threats of a lawsuit regarding the patent in question."
Or perhaps we ought to have a time out one patents, if they can't get their application through in a reasonable amount of time, then it gets denied. I find it hard to believe that something "invented" in 1992 really would take 12 years to go through the patent process without making some pretty ham fisted mistakes.
It's almost as if they were wanting to give time for others to implement the patented idea in order to sue even more people than would otherwise be possible.
You're a small company, they're a large company. They have powerful lawyers, you don't.
They can pretty much sue you for anything, no matter how stupid and baseless it is.
Sorry, this is the stupid way software patents are.
Yeah, 'cos I'm sure with no government getting in the way, the big boys will all agree to play nice. Yes siree, can't see any problem with that.
Patents aren't the problem, stupid patents are the problem.