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Lodsys Sues 7 iPhone Devs Over Patent Infringement Claims
Dachannien writes "Patently-O and Ars Technica report that Lodsys has filed suit [here's the complaint] in the Eastern District of Texas against seven iPhone developers, asserting that the defendants are infringing two patents. Apple had previously indicated their belief that all iPhone developers are protected by a licensing agreement that Apple had made with the patents' former assignee, Intellectual Ventures. But Lodsys insists that the defendants are nonetheless liable for infringement. Still an open question is whether Apple will go beyond the mailing of strongly worded letters in defending third-party iPhone devs."
They're filing in the Eastern District of Texas, you say? What a shock!
When someone says, "Any fool can see
A loss to developers due to legal actions could cause a chilling effect towards making iOS application. Developers have to go threw the hassle of approval to make sure their product is good. Then pay Apple 20% of their profits and not having legal protection from Apple would make developers go towards android where at least they can get their software out easier.
If something is so important that you feel the need to post it on the internet... It probably isn't that important.
I was wondering when the folks who didn't even read the summary but were still going to post bashing Apple would get here. Second post, well done sir.
"Have you ever thought about just turning off the TV, sitting down with your kids, and hitting them?"
Most of the infringement accusations relate to iOS apps, but they also include one Mac app (Twitterriffic for Mac) and one Android app (Labyrinth for Android).
Unfortunately, the defense theory communicated by Apple in its letter to Lodsys -- and another theory discussed on the Internet in recent weeks (divided infringement) -- could be wrong.
An app developer reported on a patent assertion against various baby tracker apps, and if the report is accurate, Apple removed some apps from it store because a patent holder claimed infringement.
umad Bro?
Signed,
Steve Jobs
(Sent from my iPhone)
Sig Follows: "Suppose you were an idiot. And suppose you were a member of Congress. But I repeat myself." -- Mark Twain
Now the only thing left is a homophobic reference about Steve Jobs.
There's been a lot of debate lately about the failed War on Drugs. Some say that legalizing drugs would take most of the income from murderous cartels, while others believe that the cartels would simple move into new markets. I have a win-win solution. Two of the core competencies of the cartels are: anonymously collecting money, and assassinating people. Let's legalize dope and pay the cartels to whack patent trolls. We free up a lot of prison space, increase tax revenues, cut spending, unfetter the economy, encourage actual innovation and product development, and scare some of the scu^W lawyers into hiding. Huge win all around. We'll have this deficit thing licked in about 3 years.
Everyone knows it, but I'll state the obvious: The US patent system is badly broken.
I do not fail; I succeed at finding out what does not work.
Software Patent, maybe even patents in general HAVE TO GO! I don't think a single week passes without me hearing about yet another stupid patent suit. They've long since outlived your usefulness.
Actually, I was not wrong on the Oracle/Google patents issue but the first one to point out that Oracle would realistically not be forced to narrow its asserted patent claims down to only 3. By now it's clear that Oracle has made headway on that issue, and Oracle's most recent bargaining position was still 21 claims. Apart from that, your comment was off-topic. We're talking about Lodsys here, and if you ask iOS app developers about my blog, I'm sure many of them will tell you that they found the information my blog (such as my detailed Lodsys FAQ) useful.
Lodsys Sues 7 iPhone Devs and 1 Andriod Dev Over Patent Infringement Claims..
Lodsys sues 7 app developers in East Texas, disagrees with Apple; Android also targeted
The real Sig captains the Northwestern. This one captains
I made the mistake of trying to read one of the patents. I have new-found respect for the staff employeed by the USPO. Good heavens, how someone can make a living reading these on a daily basis is beyond me.
What a Lodsys of bullshit. I hope these guys die horrible deaths.
And we could use a post in which we're informed that Apple users pay a fortune for pretty boxes. Bonus points if they compare their homebuilt gravy-cooled geekbox running a fork of Minix to the type of thing regular and sexually active consumers would want.
"The '078 is the modern day version of a submarine patent, the claims morphing over more than a decade through a CIP and multiple continuations, most of which were abandoned along the way" link
"This Customer-Based Product Design Module (CB-PD Module) invention is designed to embed a new type of product feature within a range of products and services, helping them evolve into Customer Directed Products (CDP) by means of Development Interactions (DI). The result is a continuous source of Aggregate Customer Desires (ACD) and Defined Customer Desires (DCD) from customers and users while they are using these products and services. This serves vendors as a continuous way to listen to Customers and understand their performance, their needs and their expectations." link
They will do so based on a pure good business decision.
If they stand by and do nothing, it will spook the future developers from creating iOS apps.
Why wouldn't they defend the devs when it could mean issues later on for the profit machine?
Have you seen what most people (at least in the USA) eat these days? I hardly think many of them are regular...
I'll meet you at the intersection of "Should be" and "Reality"
Yes, you were wrong. Especially with your laughable bullshit over those unit test files that weren't even part of a shipped product that you claimed were great "evidence" of this alleged infringement.
This is a no-brainer. Even if this was Microsoft instead of Apple, the big company that depends on its developers to enrich their products absolutely had to defend its developers whenever and however possible,
To take the view that Apple is too "negative adjective" to do the "right thing" would be absurd. They have their own interests to protect and they most certainly will. If they failed to do that, you can expect a massive drop in quality, enthusiasm and number of developers for Apple's platforms. This, in turn, would spell quiet disappointment in the user community and only the long-term, hard core fans would remain while all the latest and greatest things would be arriving in Android or even Windows.
Please take into consideration that several major Android device makers included those files in their official source code distributions (source availability packs).
I've been strongly offended by software patents ever since I learned over a decade ago about how meager the "innovations" they protect can be. I think most of us will make one or two "patentable innovations" per day before lunch, or at least infringe with some fundamental task like throwing an exception (never realizing we were "innovating" or "infringing" in the process).
So where should we send the money? I want to donate to an org that shares my opinions and is doing something about it. The two I know of are as follows, but would appreciate additional suggestions.
EFF Patent Busting Project: http://w2.eff.org/patent/wp.html
End Software Patents: http://endsoftpatents.org/donate
What has *science* done?!? -- Dr. Weird (ATHF)
The developers are using prescribed, Apple-provided APIs and are barred by Apple from implementing alternatives.
The US patent system is badly broken, at least as far as software patents go. We all know that around here. Usually, the cases that make the tech news involve these Patent Trolls suing large companies (Apple, Google, MS), heck, even SCO v Red Hat. However, here we have an example of "the little guy" getting hurt by a software patent infringement case for an obvious patent.
This case may be a good example to put in front of Congress to show them how completely broken the current system. First, the inventor wasn't harmed by these "in app purchases", it's a patent holding company trolling. Second, the patent is obvious, overly broad and should never have been approved. Third, the patent in question shows the abuses of the current continuation system here in the US. And forth, it's Joe Sixpack getting sued! Nothing works up Congress and the media like an attack on the little guy / corporation.
I'm beginning to wonder if Microsoft is behind this. It's not unusual for Micorosoft to use another company to attack competition using "IP" as weaponary.
I suspect one concern Apple might have is what effect attempting to defend iOS developers might have. If they stay out of it, patent trolls like Lodsys will obviously continue to go after potentially infringing small fries in the hopes of browbeating them into settling. But if they enter the fray, it might set a precedent which could pull them into other infringement cases that they might feel less comfortable fighting. At some point they're going to have to draw a line and say either that they will pick and choose which infringement cases they will help defend or try to delineate some rules to be able to predict such situations. Either way has its drawbacks.
And of course, they may still opt out of defending. Sure, they wrote a strongly worded letter, but they still have yet to actually put a lawyer in a courtroom or at a negotiating table, on behalf of an unaffiliated iOS developer.
Boo to the Eastern District Courts of Texas!
IANAL, however, the very first thing I'd do is move for immediate dismissal with prejudice on the basis that the Plaintiffs have failed to join indispensable parties (i.e. Apple) to the lawsuit. I don't see any way that Apple cannot be dragged into this suit and you just don't want a friend of the court brief from them.
Also, consider asking the judge to consolidate the cases so that you can pool your defenses.
And lastly, file immediate counterclaims for anything you can think of (vexatious litigation, harassment, extortion, barratry, perjury) so that they can't empty your pockets first and then just dismiss the case (w/o prejudice) and run away untouched. As long as you have counterclaims active Lodsys can't unilaterally end the case and leave you holding the bag for your legal expenses.
This case is far too much like someone finding something patented in MS Visual Studio.NET, and then suing application developers for using VS.NET to develop their own applications.
Of course, Apple should have already shown up for this just to prove that they're really not as Evil as many think them to be.
"It's the height of ridiculousness to say for those 9 lines you get hundreds of millions."
If they don't join the suit the developers should interplead them in.
Flush the patent system; it's a turd.
I can say [REDACTED] anytime I want!
This hurts Apple, because Apple gets a cut of in-app sales, and because lawsuits of this kind hurt app development for Apple products, which hurts product sales. So purely from self-interest, it seems virtually certain that Apple will sue Lodsys. If Lodsys actually had a good case, Apple would probably be willing to pay the licensing fee, but Apple's view is that they have already paid it. The fact that Lodsys has chosen to sue small developers without the resources to fight in court, rather than Apple, suggests that Lodsys is aware that their case is weak, and are hoping to extort some money from the little guys before Apple shuts them down.
Homophobic reference to Steve? I would - but I ain't scared of that little queer!
"Windows is like the faint smell of piss in a subway: it's there, and there's nothing you can do about it." - Charlie Br
Apple users pay for Apple software + hardware, without the software, Apple would be nothing better than your basic prole software developers, i.e. MS. The pretty box is simply because Apple knows how to package their goods as opposed to the Dell's, HP's, etc. package theirs. The reference to Minix is supposed to engender a moron's view of Linux, I presume. And the sexually active consumers, well, whatever turns you on.
Umm...just a suggestion, if you kinda get off on Jobs, maybe you could satisfy yourself by yourself and leave us out of it?
It was "patently" obvious to everyone that SCO was a proxy for Microsoft's attack against Linux.
I suspect that Lodsys is a proxy for Microsoft's attack against Apple. The MO is identical -- don't threaten those who can defend themselves, go after the small fry.
Running with Linux for over 20 years!
One solution might be to increase tax's on any company that only defends patents and does no R&D spending.
I don't read legalese, I don't understand what these two patents are about. One patent filed in 2006 seems to be about a way for a customer to specify what they want and get a "custom" designed "something" (The title of the application is customer-based-product design module) and talks about the user sending preferences to the vendor and receiving "preprogrammed interactions". In 2006??? Didn't we have a way for the user to order predefined "programmed interactions" well before 2006? Over a network? The other was filed in 2003 and APPEARS to be a way to gather a survey from users of different devices (again something done prior to 2003) I fail to see how either of these have to do with in app purchases. And I'm pretty sure both of these have prior art going back to the 80's at least. I don't think that the patent concept is wrong. But when you give out a patent to anyone who applies for anything...
This
It's like they're begging for name mutilation by the angry masses.
So we all know why patents are issued - so that instead of keeping knowledge to themselves, companies publish the what, the why and the how of it. This enables someone else to come along and implement this from scratch in the future. That's the whole point of them - you get a limited monopoly in return for making your inventions public.
So why is it that technically literate people can't actually clearly understand what is meant in these patents ? Why are they allowed to be so obfuscated ?
When patent trolls regularly collect triple the amount of damages awarded to practicing entities in patent litigation, it is certainly no surprise that more patent trolls are springing up and becoming ever more aggressive. They have everything to gain and relatively little to lose by filing patent enforcement actions. I fear that the only way to minimize the threat that PAEs pose to small businesses is by eliminating their incentives to assert patents -- i.e., by limiting the damages that they can collect. In the meantime, you can't really blame a company like Lodsys for taking advantage of weaknesses in the legal system.