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Lodsys Responds to Apple, Files Lawsuits Against App Developers
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LOL. You do know that Texas is by far the most popular location for patent lawsuits because Texas juries tend to find in favor of the patent holders and tend to award large amounts of money.
Too true! There is a reason so many of the news articles regarding patent litigation say: "Company X filed suit today in Federal Court in the Eastern District of Texas."
Stop it already. That is the best way for the parasites to profit, by finding someone who pays huge amounts of money for the company.
I always think it's the children on board who cry "Apple buy this, Apple buy that". Apple should buy anything from Lodsys to Dell and shut it down (I think even Microsoft was mentioned). In reality the effect would be anything from rewarding patent trolls to wasting billions for no good reason at all.
I'll translate that: All these companies have to do is port for applications to the Windows Phone OS, and the lawsuits will go away.
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Yeah, but to me it sounds like Lodsys must have something there. They did put their money where their mouth is. To me that means a LOT.
To me it means that they must know they can win whatever they are talking about.
Maybe in the end of it all Apple is going to have to pay some millions of dollars to Lodsys. How and why else would Lodsys make this $1000 offer?
It's crazy and I think Lodsys might be a bit nasty here, but who really knows.
It's very strong to put this $1000.00 thing out there, and I sortof have to respect that. Strangley.
Anyway, I hope real people are not harmed by this legal mumbo jumbo. Apple is going to have to make things right somehow. It's not a big deal I don't think. It will all go away if Apple just pays some ransom to Lodsys and moves on.
That's my take on it for what it's worth.
I hear ya, but the law has nothing to do with what's right and wrong. It's just what the law is.
It's all speculation until someone really looks at it. They'll figure it out. Maybe some mistake was made in the agreement and someone is going to get paid out as a result.
The good news for developers should be that Apple is going to stand behind them and take care of all the mess one way or another, and that's that.
I'd say there is absolutely zero chance of Apple letting any developers suffer in any way, so if you are a developer, do not worry, don't lose any sleep. One time I had some crap vaguely similar to this and the big company came to rescue me from the sharks, and it felt good to be under their wing.
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Even if they have to pay out $1000 to each, that is less than a single day of paying their lawyers. This isn't putting their money where their mouth is - it's simply a rounding error. A first-rate patent litigator can cost $800 for ONE HOUR. The $7000 they are "risking" is nothing to them.
I don't know. I'd like to agree, but the letter of the law rules.
If Lodsys has something, (and the $1000.00 thing makes me think they do), then the mistake is going to be paid for and Lodsys is in for a big payday. You can call them names and stuff, and maybe they deserve it, but rule of law is all that matters - not right and wrong.
What is Lodsys? Can you buy stock in it? I'd be buying today based on the likelyhood they are going to get paid off bigtime.
If they turn out to be wrong, will they be actually paying the $1000.00 to anyone? I guess that's the other thing to consider.
I'll be interested to see how it plays out.
At first I thought they'd be driven back under the rock they came from, but now it seems like their payday might be coming. Get the popcorn.
Oh - you mean they are only sueing 7 developers? yeah you have a point then.
I figured this was something that Lodsys could apply to every developer or something. You are right if their obligation if they are wrong is only 7K. haha.
I don't know the full story - just the Gestalt. (pardon my lack of reading on this thing).
All my comments might not count. I was assuming Lodsys had something on thousands of developers, not just a handful of developers. My assessment could be all wrong if Lodsys can only apply their claims to a handful of developers.
I feel a bit dumb now, but whatever, I'm used to that. haha.
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Nah. Lodsys is a company that buys patents in bulk for cheap some from suckers who sell them. Their business model is to sue people. They don't buy patents that everyone already licenses. They bully you into licensing, sue, and make money either way. Going after these little guys is a crock. I hope Apple is correct in their interpretation because where these scum companies risk loosing money is being wrong in their suits.
We should all mail Lodsys a rotten apple with worms inside.
You've probably got something there.
I wouldn't be surprised if this whole angle isn't an extreme way of trying to get Apple or Google to buy them outright and thus own the trademark. They'd stand to make a lot more money that way than by selling licenses to independent devs who are struggling to break even.
They'd be looking at a cool few million in the later case...a cool few million for this noise to go away.
"Lodsys had given developers 21 days to negotiate a license before filing suit, but the firm appears to have initiated lawsuits early in order to thwart Apple's efforts to back the developers."
Ah, so now in addition to being bottom-feeding scumbags, they are liars too.
Ah, so now in addition to being bottom-feeding scumbags, they are liars too.
And then a cool few million for the next troll, and for each of the hundreds after that one, and so on. If you start paying to make the noise go away, you are bound to get completely deaf very soon.
If I understand correctly, developers would still need to pay for having already violated the patent.
I wonder how much many of the posters' attitudes would change if THEY were the patent owners:
"Sir, your third cousin, twice removed just died and left you a base patent on click-to-upgrade. Apple and other major companies have already licensed it, so there's no dispute that it's valid."
"Wow! That's an incredible inheritance! But isn't everyone using this invention nowadays?"
"Yes sir, that's why it's worth millions. It's as if you had a patent on multi-touch or something."
"Hmm. Well, I don't want to be called a patent troll, so to heck with my family, let's give it away for free!"
"Sir, your third cousin, twice removed just died and left you a base patent on click-to-upgrade. Apple and other major companies have already licensed it, so there's no dispute that it's valid."
"Wow! That's an incredible inheritance! But isn't everyone using this invention nowadays?"
"Yes sir, that's why it's worth millions. It's as if you had a patent on multi-touch or something."
"Hmm. Well, I don't want to be called a patent troll, so to heck with my family, let's give it away for free!"
Has nothing to do with moral (and btw: 99.9% of the businesses that make lots of money don't have a moral, otherwise they would be a charity without making money).
The point here is that Apple already payed a license fee (through bulk license of the complete package). Unfortunately that was licensed before Lodsys owned it so they don't get as much money out of it as they would like to and now they try to find other means to get more money (which is in general ok - as long as the means are fully legal and covered by law)
The one thing that has to be clarified in court is: Does the apple license cover the developers using Apples API or not. My guess would be yes, since the developers are NOT implementing any of the technology and don't have their own servers - they are just using a product. In general, patent holders can't ask for license fees from USERS of a product since the producer of the product has already payed for that. But of course there are many dirty details and some court has to decide this.
Apple should file suit in some court (outside of Texas) to have that clarified.
Presumably not very much. A "reasonable royalty" would probably be calculated just on the "infringing" sales (and probably only US sales). And it would likely be very small, since the "infringing" feature isn't worth much to the developers (after all - they removed it! And sales presumably would be unaffected by removal).
I'm not going to lie, I have no clue what that means
Filing for a declaratory judgment is basically filing a "lawsuit against yourself" and asking a judge to submit a judgment before the plaintiff can file their own lawsuit. Doing it in a friendly district means Apple could have won a court case that basically said "The License covers all 3rd party app developers" before Lodsys even had a chance to file a single lawsuit, creating a legal shield preventing them from doing so.
This is all as I understand it of course, not being a lawyer.
Yep, exactly the same situation isn't it?
Apple the patent troll is suing Samsung's app developers.
Nothing whatsoever to do with ripping off a company's products...
You must be so proud to be able to smugly point that out to us all.
Admittedly I'm not that well read up on this subject, but if they hold a legal patent and are not receiving royalty payments on it, isn't that unfair?
What I find amazing is all the people on this thread calling Lodsys scum and wanting them dead for "picking on the little guy" yet Apple going after a teenager for selling some white iPhone parts is simply Apple protecting their IP.
Certainly Apple think the patents are valid or they wouldn't have licensed them. Even in Apple's letter, not once was the validity of the patents questioned, it was simply whether the developers fell under the license Apple obtained.
Certainly Apple think the patents are valid or they wouldn't have licensed them. Even in Apple's letter, not once was the validity of the patents questioned, it was simply whether the developers fell under the license Apple obtained.
I don't imagine this to be an easy fix at all. I am just trying to simplify what I would like to see happen as an end result if the overall patent problems are ever addressed and dealt with.
Thank you for your added insight, though
I wouldn't necessarily call what you read insight. Patent trolls use the same argument, "helping the little guy" with enforcing the patentability of their inventions. The reality is, most patent filing service businesses are highly unsuccessful at getting patents granted. They too are sharks preying on the dreams of the little guy. Nearly all who submit their inventions get taken for processing and other fees but patents are never granted. They are strung along with the promise of success and told to be patient because prosecuting takes a long time. Successfully prosecuting a patent is a very expensive and time consuming process, not to mention the expertise needed. That's why these patent filing firms fail to get inventions successfully patented. But they will happily take the little guy's money, whether that guy's invention has a snowball's chance in hell. So, who really cares if that end of the market gets disrupted or not?
Lol I love how both of us got downrated for our responses. Thank you for the explanation, it makes much more sense now
It shows. Most patents, especially in the software world, are what has been called "sub-prime patents". The idea behind patents is not that the inventor should get payments, the idea is that the inventor publishes his invention (so that the world can benefit from it) in exchange for a temporary monopoly on the invention. This good idea has been completely perverted. People create patents that are as vague as possible, so nobody can understand what they actually say, including the inventor, with the sole purpose of suing people who fall into the trap of doing something that is matched by the patent. The point is: Nobody wants this invention. Nobody needs it. It doesn't help anyone. Apple and all the iPhone developers have never, ever looked at the patent and used it to find out how to do something. I actually don't know of one single case where someone in the software industry extracted useful information from a patent that helped them building something. The amount of work in the "invention" is minuscule compared to the amount of work that is needed to actually create a working product.
Summary: Patents have values not by representing and protecting inventions, but by giving someone the tools to extort money from the people who actually create products. So actually, taking that patent and shoving it up their **** would be much more fair.