8 ms·
Angry Birds maker Rovio sued over app patents
- wccrawford 15y agoSo yet another 'You've violated our patents, but we aren't saying which ones' story? I don't say this often, but I'm going to this time: That should be illegal. It's a threat, clear and simple. It's an attempt to force them into action without actually having to have anything concrete. It causes a ton of pain and anguish, and costs a lot of money, even if they never actually sue. It's absolutely ridiculous and should never be allowed. Is it really that different than libel or slander? You're accusing someone of something without providing any proof that it's true. And if you just say 'whoops' afterwards, you're scott-free, but they've still got damages to their reputation and bottom line. It's disgusting and cowardly.
- Produce 15y agoKind of similar to how some companies with a lot of money bully people into submission by suing them with the intent of forcing them to run out of money, even if when the company wouldn't actually win the case.
- gte910h 15y agoI so wish we'd get Euro-style loser pays (it's really Judge assigns fees, and one party doesn't pay everything, nor do they let expensive lawyer fees be billed if they're unwarranted, etc). Then companies could be more "Bring it on" when things are totally out there.
- macrael 15y agoI believe it is fairly common in the US for victors to be awarded money to cover their legal fees. The problem is that none of these companies being sued are confidant they would win, and they don't have the money to cover losing.
- ryusage 15y agoI think the other part of that problem is that, even if they could be guaranteed to win and have their costs paid, the whole process could take a very long time, and they have to be able to pay all those costs in the meantime.
- gte910h 15y agoThat's only true if they're really out of bounds. In the EU, they divide the fees along a much more graduated basis every time
- almightygod 15y agoI liken it to fraudulent DMCA takedown notices which are illegal
- gte910h 15y agoUnfortunately Barratry isn't enforced in the US that much: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Barratry http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Barratry
- sandstrom 15y agoIf I'm not mistaken Rovio are based in Finland, where software patents don't hold much water.
- astrodust 15y agoThey're selling a product in the US market, so they're subject to US laws so long as they want to continue doing that.
- atirip 15y agoNo they are not. Finnish company is subject to Finnish laws and Finnish laws only. If they produce something in Finland, then only valid Finnish patents are their concern. US Patents are not valid for Rovio in Finland. Now. If and when their _product_ is sold in US and infringes some US patents then patent owner can block selling that product and this is the only thing they can do. No damages no nothing. In Rovio's case the only thing Llodsys can achieve is to prevent Apple for selling Angry Birds in US. Nothing more.
- sigzero 15y agoYou just reiterated what he said.
- gte910h 15y agoIf you sell products in the US, the courts will enjoy sales or award damages here if you violate patents/copyrights. Apple would be forced, for instance, to pay the judgement then rovio the extra, etc.
- rkalla 15y ago+1 It reminds me of the Monster Cable lawsuit against Blue Jeans Cables[1] and any other company using "Monster" in the name; including, but not limited to, a go-cart racing company. Fortunately, the BJC owner was a lawyer in another life and peeled back the layers of the lawsuit to find exactly what you describe... a giant, non-sensical, non-cohesive set of documents showing nothing in particular, not even addressing the specific complaints, just meant as a "pile of scary papers" to make people freak out and write checks. You are absolutely right, this IS extortion and it IS illegal, but there aren't a whole lot of protections in the system for a little guy trying to counter-sue a firm full of lawyers that have more financial resources to drag it on. [1] http://www.bluejeanscable.com/legal/mcp/index.htm http://www.bluejeanscable.com/legal/mcp/index.htm
- greatreorx 15y agoThe amended complaint clearly shows what patents Lodsys is accusing Rovio of infringing. "On May 22, 2007, U.S. Patent No. 7,222,078 (the "'078 patent") was duly and legally issued for "Methods and Systems for Gathering Information from Units of a Commodity Across a Network." ... Rovio makes, sells, uses, imports, and/or offers to sell infringing applications, including but not limited to Angry Birds for iPhone and Angry Birds for Android, which infringe at least claims 1 and 24 of the '078 patent under 35 U.S.C. § 271." http://www.scribd.com/doc/60587096/11-07-21-Lodsys-Amended-Complaint http://www.scribd.com/doc/60587096/11-07-21-Lodsys-Amended-C...
- wccrawford 15y agoThere are 2, actually. Rovio makes, sells, uses, imports, and/or offers to sell infringing applications, including but not limited to Angry Birds for iPhone andAngry Birds for Android, which infringe at least claim 27 of the „565 patent under 35 U.S.C. § 271. U.S. Patent No. 7,620,565 - 27. A tangible computer readable medium having stored thereon, computer executable instructions that, if executed by a computing device, cause the computing device to perform a method comprising: monitoring a product for an occurrence in the product of a trigger event of a predefined plurality of trigger events, incrementing a counter corresponding to the trigger event upon detection of the occurrence of the trigger event in the product; displaying a user interface, configured to probe for information regarding a use of the product, if the counter exceeds a threshold; storing an input received from the user interface on a device; and transmitting the input to a server. Rovio makes, sells, uses, imports, and/or offers to sell infringing applications, including but not limited to Angry Birds for iPhone and Angry Birds for Android, which infringe at least claims 1 and 24 of the '078 patent under 35 U.S.C. § 271. U.S. PATENT NO. 7,222,078 - 1. A system comprising: units of a commodity that can be used by respective users in different locations, a user interface, which is part of each of the units of the commodity, configured to provide a medium for two-way local interaction between one of the users and the corresponding unit of the commodity, and further configured to elicit, from a user, information about the user's perception of the commodity, a memory within each of the units of the commodity capable of storing results of the two-way local interaction, the results including elicited information about user perception of the commodity, a communication element associated with each of the units of the commodity capable of carrying results of the two-way local interaction from each of the units of the commodity to a central location, and a component capable of managing the interactions of the users in different locations and collecting the results of the interactions at the central location. U.S. PATENT NO. 7,222,078 - 24. The system of claim 1 wherein the two-way local interactions comprise a transaction for sale of a product or a service contract for the commodity. That first one looks like a counter that triggers a data push to a server when it reaches a certain number. Really? That second one is a simple feedback form that pushes the data to a server? Really? I can't believe these. Cripes. IANAL.
- bcl 15y agoSoftware Patents Must Die.
- protomyth 15y agoSome patent must die, but I am not sure defining it as software is going to help. I get the feeling the goal should be all "business process" patents. Not mechanical or chemical, but the the patenting of procedures. I think that would take care of this stupidity. I worry that saying software will allow another open avenue.
- krobertson 15y agoThese patent lawsuits are getting ridiculous. Going to get to the point where it stifles innovation. Progress on platforms is slowed, indie developers who are hoping for a viral hit will get smacked with some BS lawsuit, etc.
- suking 15y agoI think we're already at that point unfortunately.
- null_ptr 15y agoLooks like they went after big companies and studios too, maybe they will get counter-sued out of existence.
- roc 15y agoHow? At best, the big pile of big defendants will manage to get the patent(s) in question invalidated after millions in legal expenses. But as we've seen with Lodsys, they have no shortage of patents in their portfolio. There's nothing to stop them from taking another patent out of their portfolio and applying the same strategy: shake as much easy settlement money out of the small shops as possible, then swing for the fences.
- gte910h 15y agoThe could lose the other patents as part of a counter suit if they step out of line.
- talmand 15y agoFor a while now I have considered getting into development for mobile devices. With all the stupid lawsuits lately I think I'm close to deciding not to bother. At the least not release anything I do for public consumption.
- sireat 15y agoWhile the lawsuits are stupid, that is not a reason to avoid development. Do not let the bad guys win.
- talmand 15y agoWell, I would probably develop just for the experience but I'm not sure about releasing unless it was something quite interesting.
- gte910h 15y agoThey can only really effect the American sales. MOst apps sell a very sizable percentage overseas (I've seen about 45%, I've seen other devs with more like 60-80% overseas). Don't let these assclowns stop you.
- dpcan 15y agoI only develop on Android at the moment, and sell in the Android Market, and if I limited sales strictly to overseas, I'd be dead in the water. ~80% of all my sales are in the U.S.
- gte910h 15y agoiOS is a much deeper base more willing to pay. It's worth the cost of a mini or air, and would also happen to safeguard you against patents more (Apple's already batted down lodsys for instance).
- shareme 15y agoanyone notice that MS and Nokia are not sued? This is a MS patent troll dog and pony show..
- astrodust 15y agoIt's because Microsoft would rip their head off. You don't patent troll a bigger patent troll. Paul Allen is much bigger than Lodsys.
- Meai 15y agoAnd how exactly would that work? They don't have any products of their own, so they can hardly be sued for infringing on anything.
- eftpotrm 15y agoBut a company on the scale of Microsoft have the resources to systematically dismantle their patents, track down prior art, produce material demonstrating that the patent in question is demonstrably 'obvious to anyone skilled in the art' and so on. Lodsys's product range is their patents which they license and / or sue on. They lose by their patents being demonstrated as the worthless nonsense they truly should be, at which point they're gone completely - it's a bigger loss than having to pay a license for a product or rewrite a component.
- flocial 15y agoNow the Angry Birds have something to be angry about. Weaving this into the game would be epic. The Angry Birds Lodsys Defense Fund Edition where your favorite birds destroy the patent pigs.
- JacobAldridge 15y agoAnd Congress give up half-way through Level 1, not because it's too hard, just because they don't care enough to win?
- smokeyj 15y agoI never understood how the patent office measures "non-obvious". If two companies are using the same technology, it couldn't have been that non-obvious. Add that to the list of central planning gone awry. Of course it started with the best of intentions tho.
- deleted 15y ago[deleted]
- 18pfsmt 15y agoAs is pointed out in other comments, Rovio is subject to the laws of the markets in which it is selling products. So, if they don't want to deal with this lawsuit, they can simply remove their products from the US market (doesn't sound like a good idea to me).
- deleted 15y ago[deleted]
- 18pfsmt 15y agoLodsys will probably ask for an injunction of some sort, restricting further sales of the alleged infringing products. Take-Two and Electronic Arts, which are large publicly traded companies, are fellow defendants. The defendants have 3 options: 1) discredit the IP claim Lodsys is making on the technology 2) prove they are not infringing 3) pay the fees Lodsys is asking. I would suspect Rovio to follow the lead of the larger co-defendants in this case.
- 18pfsmt 15y agoI have now learned why we need to address people directly, as in "name:" Same thing for IRC logs. Ugh, deleted comments just confuse people.
- seles 15y agoI kept expecting lodsys to just go away. It is now clear they won't. Now that they have demonstrated how profitable it can be to exploit the laws of patents, there probably will be new companies popping up trying to do the same thing, and it won't stop until their is patent reform.
- wallflower 15y agoIdeally, a consortium of Apple+Microsoft+Nokia+Google+HTC+Samsung would buy out Lodsys to silence it. The price would be in the 9 figures though. However, if only Apple bought out Lodsys, would it go after Google with its new weapons?
- orangecat 15y agoIdeally, a consortium of Apple+Microsoft+Nokia+Google+HTC+Samsung would buy out Lodsys to silence it. That would be very bad. It would provide a strong incentive for future patent trolls to do exactly the same thing.
- dmooney1 15y agoSo maybe get these companies to spend nine figures founding a non-profit to systematically challenge the patent trolls' portfolio.