Patent Troll Going After iPhone/iPad Developers Who Use In-App Payments
from the oh-come-on dept
Another day, another example of a patent system holding back innovation. The latest is that a typical patent troll operation, named Lodsys, is threatening and/or suing a bunch of iOS mobile app developers for daring to make use of Apple's own in-app payment API to offer the ability to make purchases from within their apps. Lodsys lists out four patents that "are available for licensing."- 5,999,908: Customer-based product design module
- 7,133,834: Product value information interchange server
- 7,222,078: Methods and systems for gathering information from units of a commodity across a network
- 7,620,565: Customer-based product design module
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Filed Under: commerce, in-app payments, patents, trolls
Companies: apple, lodsys
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BS
But, innovation wouldn't have happened unless...
Oh. Right.
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1992
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Re: 1992
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Re:
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Re: Re:
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1992
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Apparently it's the '078 patent
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Smart on his part
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Re: Smart on his part
You mean, the way Microsoft squashed Eolas?
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Patent #00000001
Followed shortly thereafter by Patent #00000002 - "Methods and systems for bringing patent infringement claim to a court or courts in East Texas."
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Let's try changing the PTO's incentives
Make the fee very high if the PTO rejects the patent for any valid reason. (Novelty, prior art, non patentable subject matter, etc)
Make the fee very low if the PTO grants a patent.
This will both speed up the process of rejecting patents, and will significantly increase the percentage of rejected patents.
This will also give the PTO incentive to crowd source the finding of prior art, etc. In fact the PTO could pay a bounty to anyone who can show grounds that lead to rejecting the patent application. (eg, it will create jobs)
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Let's say someone patents a special style of bolt. Lets say I buy a bunch of those style of bolts from a manufacturer who doesnt hold the patent. Now when I sell my widget using those bolts I can get sued?
This scenario is meant for my understanding because I'm sure it probably isnt a good analogy.
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Response to: Anonymous Coward on May 13th, 2011 @ 2:24pm
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Re:
Basically, the patent system never really was all that great, but it's been perverted to massively favor litigious patent-holders over community-minded innovators.
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Of course, Apple has enough money to put up a fight in court. Much easier to pick on the little guy...
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and preferably work with an API that has an agreement which indemnifies it's users from the systems and methods used therein, ie. within the API itself... good luck.
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Don't the developers have an easy out here?
I don't know much about the law, so I may be off the mark here, but since the devs didn't come up with this on their own, I can't see how they wouldn't be able to deflect.
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jurisdiction?
As far as I know Scotland is in European Union and not in the United States and we don't have software patents in EU... so why should we care about idiotic american patent system? Why should Thomas not treat that cease and desist letter as low quality toilet paper? The guy is Scotland based and US courts have no jurisdiction over Scotland - how can they threaten him... and all of us, non-US based app developers? What am I missing?
Anyway... I know that Silicon Valley is the best place for start-ups and whatnot, but I wonder when are pros of being in the Valley going to outweigh cons of being located in United States and start-ups start to move to less anti-innovation countries.
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Yet another reason......
I've said here before and I'll say it again now, software patents should not be recognized under US law. Only copyright should cover software (the exact coding of the software in question).
No patents should be granted for something that can be achieved by two or more separate people using different software languages. If it's also something that was going to naturally come to pass, just by the natural progression of technology, it should also never receive a patent.
My 2 cents.
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Patents
PATENT TROLL rated R for RIP OFF!
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