Sidebar Sidebar
Become a MacRumors Supporter for $50/year with no ads, ability to filter front page stories, and private forums.

Lodsys Publishes May 2011 Legal Response to Apple's Challenge

ALange said:
Apple isn't a patent troll. A patent troll is a company who's only economic product is lawsuits, while manufacturing no products or inventing anything.

The company Apple sued made a genuine effort to steal Apple's ideas, and they sued them based on Steve's moral principle that blatant theft of their design and trade dress is not acceptable. Samsung went as far as to make a knock off of nearly every aspect of Apple's products, from the box, to the charger to the earphones to the manual to bezel, to the spacing between the camera and the flash to the location and order of the label text on the back, to the materials, to the interface. Yes Apple used technicalities to get a judgment but you literally had a major company making a blatant knockoff of their products to the point where the angles and radiuses of some products were so identically they could only exist if someone actually measured Apple's products and then designed them or had the greatest coincidence in product design in history.

Lodsys doesn't actually make a product, and they are literally a company of lawyers not protecting anything but just trying to make a quick buck.
Click to expand...
Lol, AAPL patent things that noone would even imagine to patent, like "rounded corners", or "bounce back effect" and dont tell me they "developed it" ;)
Apple is another patent troll like all the tech/patent companies out there. [/quote]

All tech companies have all sorts of ridiculous patents. These patents are never intended to be pursued but instead are intended to be ammunition to protect themselves lawsuits through countersuits.

Apple never intended to sue Samsung over such nonsensical BS, read my original post and read between the lines. Apple very specifically sued Samsung using BS patents because they blatantly ripped off their designs to the point of ridiculousness.

As long as patent law is plain stupid , allowing to patent things without prototype , then good luck :) we will see more of that comming.
With prototype law, most of stupid and blocking patents would be invalidated.

See apple patented a phone with rounded screen? where's the tech? on paper only cause apple tries to patent something they dont have (they dont even exist in screen developing/manufacturing business). This is just another example, especially when other companies already have that kind of screens.
Click to expand...

Again Apple didn't sue Samsung because they had rounded corners, do you seriously think that any sane company would do that? Apple sued Samsung because they blatnatly tried to rip off every aspect Apple's product line. Samsung employees have repeatedly gone to jail for copying and stealing their competitors ideas. Samsung even went as far as to make products for Sony that Sony designed and engineered and then released identical products for a lower price under their own brand with the same specifications.

The lawsuit was a proxy way of dealing with broader issues.
 
Ciclismo said:
Sounds like someone is trying to get rich off semantics.
Click to expand...

Indeed, but I believe Apple could respond by saying that the developers are actually customers. They are benefitting from a service from Apple (they pay to be part of the iOS developer program) and to have their Apps hosted on Apple's service.

So if it is a battle of semantics, the battle as begun!
 
Well as app makers are paying Apple 30% of the revenues, they are certainly business partners and responsible for a large part of Apple profits. Let's see what a judge thinks of this. Anyways Lodsys sucks, it should be forbidden to file suite for licenses not used by the complainer themself.

----------
bmunge said:
They are manipulating a flaw in our judicial system for the sake of profit. They have no viable claim of ownership of the IAP system. It's a ridiculous scheme that seeks to exploit app developers.
Click to expand...

This is like to mob, scaring people into buying a license by threatening them with expensive law suites and fancy layers.
 
iGrip said:
Putting patents into the hands of the highest bidder ensures that they go to the entity which values them most. That is basic capitalism.

And if patent holding companies refuse to license them, they make zero profits, so I'm not sure what the basis is for your last sentence.

----------



Of course not. The inventor makes its profit when it assigns the patent to the holding company. If the inventor was able to make more profits by licensing the invention to third parties, it would do so. But they are inventors, and they are not licencors. It is called division of labor, and it is the basis of civilization.

----------



No worries then. You cannot patent a time machine any more than you can patent a perpetual motion machine.

----------



They do not profit by suing. They are merely "made whole' by recovering what was stolen from them.

----------




If I use your song to make a movie soundtrack, I can be sued unless I license it. If I use your software without licensing it, I can be sued. This ain't rocket surgery.

----------



Naw. They want those who use their property to pay them. Simple as that.

----------



If that is true, then how did Apple license the patent?

----------



ISTM that each and every patent owned by a holding company was purchased from an inventor who thought that the sale amply rewarded them. If not, then why the heck would the inventor sell their patent?

Do you imagine that the inventors are victims? They liked the deal they got, or else they would have said "I want more money or i will refuse to sell".

Sheesh. This ain't rocket surgery.

----------



The dev is a vendor. Apple is the customer.

----------



If the devs use a patented invention without licensing it, then they are thieves.

----------



Apple also thought that they had paid to use the iPad trademark in China.

Oops!

----------



By that definition, Lodsys is NOT a patent troll, because they have a second "economic product". They license patents to third parties, like Apple.

----------



Unless Lodsys guaranteed that the patent was valid, what basis would Apple have to demand a refund?

----------



Except for the fact that there is no basis in copyright law for charging listeners. Other than that, maybe the situations are exactly the same. But given that, the situations bear no resemblance whatsoever.
Click to expand...



How can Lodsys possibly own something that Apple had already made a multi billion dollar industry out of, had a complete end to end working solution, with plenty of other companies doing the same, LONG BEFORE Lodsys ever appeared on the scene. LONG BEFORE Lodsys bought the company that held the supposed patent and LONG BEFORE that company had registered that patent.

Sounds to me like the patent office are as much at fault for issuing a patent for a "new idea" (ha ha ha) that was already in widespread use, for many years, in the REAL WORLD, by companies who actually make stuff, companies who actually drive innovation rather than patent trolls who create nothing.
 
My1stMacWasLisa said:
How can Lodsys possibly own something that Apple had already made a multi billion dollar industry out of, had a complete end to end working solution, with plenty of other companies doing the same, LONG BEFORE Lodsys ever appeared on the scene.
Click to expand...

I don't know why Apple decided that Lodsys had a valid patent and decided that they needed to get a license for it.

But Apple certainly did both. HTH.
 
Get rid of IAPs and problem solved.

If Apple was so focused on creating the best user experience, they would have banned IAPs from the start
 
The purpose of a patent is to advance technological development by ensuring a limited monopoly on a new invention and allowing inventors to recoup their development costs. Drug patents are the best example of the patent system working well.

Software patents are the best example of the patent system not working well. The crushing majority of software patent infringment is as a result of independent invention. ie someone will patent how to do something and another person will invent the same thing without ever stealing the first person's work. Software patents also typically take zero effort to invent and are simply just patents on fundamental logic in the context of software.

Lodsys' patent can literally be sumarized as:

Patent for in app purchases, a purchase is made, except, inside a software program by any means, using any method, in any software context.

That's not inventing something, that's catagorizing existing basic logic. It also did not cost the original inventor a single dollar to invent, as it is OBVIOUS. If you want to purchase something with a computer using existing payment processing technology you can just program it. There is no research and development involved. The idea is obvious to litterally anyone, and there is no problem to be solved. Their patent is literally So you want to buy things inside software, ok "just do it"! I'm pretty sure Nike has prior art on that.


They do not profit by suing. They are merely "made whole' by recovering what was stolen from them.
Click to expand...

So no, Lodsys isn't being "made whole", first off because Apple already licensed their product and licensed is to their business partners and they are trying to scam them for more money. And second because the patent is not reimburing any research or development costs. So in fact based on the spirit of the law Lodsys is stealing, not making themselves whole after the original inventor spent so much time and money inventing something which takes no effort to invent.
 
nepalisherpa said:
Yes, but, developers could get rid of in-app purchase feature to not give anything to Lodsys.
Click to expand...

That depends on how you monetize your apps. If your using virtual currency to generate income, then you cant just get rid of it and its fine. They need to figure out another way to make money. We're not here to just give free crap out and make nothing for it and from my experience the freemium buinsess works pretty well over paid apps (ie: free game where users can unlock everything without paying if they desired but for those lazy people they can purchase blah blah blah).

Take dota for example, its free and built up its community so that they can even design their own hero icon. We could just have a standard set of heroes that wont have customization and pay for it and it would be the same as a free game with no customization, but with freemium it should generally be a win/win situation. Get the full game for free with possible personal customizataion thru unlocking chests etc... or buy those custom hero cloths if you want to.
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Register on MacRumors! This sidebar will go away, and you'll see fewer ads.
Top Bottom
Back