Patent Suit Leads To 500,000 Annoyed Software Users

ciaran_o_riordan writes "A rare glimpse at the human harm of a software patent lawsuit: company receives 500,000 calls complaining about video quality after a video call system was forced to change to avoid a patent. That's a lot of people having a bad day. We don't usually hear these details because the court documents get ordered sealed and the lawyers only say what the companys' communication strategists allow. However, for VirnetX v. Apple, Jeff Lease decided to go the hearings, take notes, and give them to a journalist. While most coverage is focussing on the fines involved, doubling or halving Apple's fine would have a much smaller impact on your day than the removal of a feature from some software you like. Instead of letting the software patents debate be reduced to calls for sympathy for big companies getting fined, what other evidence is out there, like this story, for harm caused directly to software users?"

Comments

Re:My give-a-darn meter is reading negative GADs

[mjwx]

Maps? Google wasn't permitted to improve or do squat with the iOS map app until Apple kicked them off as a standard app. When Apple's maps came out, bad as they were, all of a sudden Google's map app came back improved and updated, with features that were only released on Android because they were now free of Apple's restrictions on what features they were permitted to implement on the IOS version of the app.

There, fixed that for you.

Google wanted to put turn by turn navigation in. Apple stopped them because they didn't want Google branding on it.