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Lodsys Takes On Gaming Heavyweights Including Rovio, EA, and Atari in Patent Dispute
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Some software patents are valid, for example, MP3 compression. That is true innovation.
But look at what kind of patent Lodsys holds, it is pathetic. Software patents are simply too easy to be misused. The patent office should be blamed for this situation. How come an "upgrade" button can be patented?
But look at what kind of patent Lodsys holds, it is pathetic. Software patents are simply too easy to be misused. The patent office should be blamed for this situation. How come an "upgrade" button can be patented?
That's why some companies sued Lodsys proactively to get a declaration of non-infringement. That puts Lodsys in the court and makes them rack up costs. I think the general feeling is that these patents are actually worthless (not in the geeks-looking-at-patents-and-claiming-they-are-worthless sense, but in the patent-lawyer-declaring-they-are-worthless sense), and that this is a case where the patent troll will end up with nothing but empty pockets.
It's not just that the patent frankly doesn't look very inventive. The big problem is that it patents some interaction between apps and servers, and the apps and servers are not run by the same entity. In the case of iOS devices, Apple says very clearly that all the actions that would be covered by the patent are actually performed by Apple, and Apple has a license. Lodsys also has been making lots of claims what their patents supposedly are about, but have been found quoting very selectively and misleading.
I can't feel any admiration. What I feel is disgust.
Your first point: What Lodsys claims their patents are covering, and what their patents are actually covering, are very very different things. Let's say this plainly: They are lying. If you look at what the patents actually say, you will find that developers are very unlikely to be infringing, and Lodsys knows that. To your second point: Apple licensed a whole package of patents from some other company, not from Lodsys. Like the recent Nortel patent auction: Apple and four or five other companies bought about 4,500 patents. Among those 4,500 there are surely some that are completely worthless. Nobody bothered sorting that out, they just bought the lot.
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But why try to go after iOS developers that are already covered by the Apple license - Apple licensed the Lodsys patent portfolio.
Problem is that Apple made the agreement with the previous owners of the patent and apparently Lodsys is not happy with the terms wants to squeeze more money out of it and is now trying to squeeze money out the developers.
Of course this does not address Android and others targeted since to my knowledge there is no license agreement.
But if I see what and whom they are going after the patents seems too broad. They are also going after developers whose only 'crime' is to add a "more games" button to the application to show ads to their own games. The next step is than to go after everyone doing 'click advertisement'? Also it seems that every major webpage is violating their patents (Adidas/BestBuy/...) ? Seems to be to broad.
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Yep...when Apple tried to claim they invented the "grid" layout, these boards were full of..."Hey, its business....gotta protect your brand"
Apple is not disputing the patent - they licensed it. The problem is the Apple lawyers read the license contract in a way that the developers are covered and the new owner of the patents (Lodsys) disagrees.
Does Lodsys actually produce anything or do they sit on patents and wait years/decades for someone to "steal" their intellectual property?
They don't make anything! Go to their website, they license patents for a living. -_- Ugh.
So? I didn't write premiere pro CS5 either but I bought the rights to use it. Why would IP become invalid just because it bought and sold?
So they are annoying, doesn't mean a patent isn't a patent all of a sudden. The real issue is how did they get to the point where they can patent the crap out of nothing. If any of us spend money to get a legal patent on whatever, why would you not defend it? No point in owning a patent if you don't.
So they are annoying, doesn't mean a patent isn't a patent all of a sudden. The real issue is how did they get to the point where they can patent the crap out of nothing. If any of us spend money to get a legal patent on whatever, why would you not defend it? No point in owning a patent if you don't.
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Exactly, they can patent a stain of dogpoo on a multitouch screen and the minute your dog meses up they can take you to court. So they don't innovate and just invest in lawsuits, so what? Apple already lost a few patent lawsuits because they abused the situation. The messed up thing with these patents is: nobody is right anymore. Patents are useless unless you have a big legal department.
According to the "Shelby Museum of History" in Shelby, Ohio, the incandescent light bulb was invented by John Wellington Starr almost 30 years before Edison's team.
A firehouse in Livermore, CA currently has the oldest known still burning light bulb that was made by the Shelby Electric Company.
In this day and age their services are probably much needed. The average-joe innovator has very little chance in taking on the big guys in the industry even if they are infringing upon his or her patents. Thus, there is a clear rationale for innovators to transfer the (high) risk part of their asset to someone more capable of carrying said risk. This someone can in turn hedge risks and specialize, not in innovation, but in protection of innovation, in line with standard division-of-labor reasoning. Ergo, the business as such is perfectly legit, sound, and most likely in-demand.
That said, software-patents are atrocious and America should be smacked around for dragging the rest of us in to the litigatious mess that they have created.
Wirelessly posted (Mozilla/5.0 (iPhone; U; CPU iPhone OS 4_3_3 like Mac OS X; en-us) AppleWebKit/533.17.9 (KHTML, like Gecko) Version/5.0.2 Mobile/8J2 Safari/6533.18.5)
I wonder if lodsys has The rights to use Thomas Edison's quote.
I wonder if lodsys has The rights to use Thomas Edison's quote.
There is a big difference between Apple and Lodsys. Lodsys has never made a product. The simply bought the rights to a couple of drawings and a paragraph of text that someone wrote several years ago without any clue of how to actually do it. They basically wrote a patent that said "I patent starfighters that shoot lasers" and then waited for someone to actually invent it and then sued them. Apple on the other hand made a product, that was so nice that others tried to copy it. BIG difference. I'm not sure that Apple is right in their suits, but they have a stronger moral argument than Lodsys does.
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In some cases Lodsys is claiming they patented a hyperlink.
Developers are putting links in their app that takes users to other apps they have written, either on iTunes or their own website. Lodsys is claiming that this is gathering information from the user when really it isn't.
Hyperlink patents have failed before...
http://news.cnet.com/2100-1033-955001.html
Developers are putting links in their app that takes users to other apps they have written, either on iTunes or their own website. Lodsys is claiming that this is gathering information from the user when really it isn't.
Hyperlink patents have failed before...
http://news.cnet.com/2100-1033-955001.html
As a developer it is a really strange feeling to look at a few Apple-provided lines of code and know that if I paste them into my app, I will be sued.
EA, the king of uninventive games, goes head to head with Lodsys, one of the biggest patent trolls of this generation.
I hope they both go down. But if it must only be one, then Lodsys, because I'd like to include some in-app purchases in my apps.
I hope they both go down. But if it must only be one, then Lodsys, because I'd like to include some in-app purchases in my apps.
Yep. You could sit on that patent forever and never produce a thing and prevent others from producing anything too, stifling advancement. What if a drug maker finds a cure for cancer, patents it, then sits on it and prevents others from manufacturing it or something similar to it, so that the billions that drug companies make in current cancer treatments are protected? A patent is not nor should be absolute.
No, you don't "own" that copy. Adobe does. No software license allows you to "own" it. Read any software license agreement and you'll see.
Actually, its not difficult or expensive to file a patent.
There must exist prior art to all of those points as far as I can tell. It's crazy how vague and broad they are as well.
Apple had a product. A product that was new, innovative, and blew the competition away. Lodsys have a patent, an idea, that could in theory be used by companies for products that they, not Lodsys, might want to bring to market. You can see the difference there, right?