31–40 of 51 posts
anyone notice that MS and Nokia are not sued? This is a MS patent troll dog and pony show..
It's because Microsoft would rip their head off. You don't patent troll a bigger patent troll. Paul Allen is much bigger than Lodsys.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
They 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.
I 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.
So 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…
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.
So 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…
"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-C...
Earlier quoted context omitted.
Kind 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.
I 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.
So 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…
The 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 A…
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.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
As 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]
Earlier quoted context omitted.
It's because Microsoft would rip their head off. You don't patent troll a bigger patent troll. Paul Allen is much bigger than Lodsys.
And how exactly would that work? They don't have any products of their own, so they can hardly be sued for infringing on anything.
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.
Now 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.