Category: Technology Author : Steven Hodson Posted: July 16, 2011
Tags : Apple, copyright, google, Iconfactory, Kootol, Lodsys, microsoft, patents, Twitteriffic
In the beginning patents were conceived of as a way for inventors of all types to protect their ideas from being stolen or copied without any legal repercussions.
As idealistic as that might have been we have seen the whole patent system become misused to the point that some claim that, especially when it comes to software patents, developers are seriously re-considering whether selling their products in the US is worth the risk.
In a post this weekend in the Guardian Online Charles Arthur writes about several European app developers that have pulled all their apps from US distribution due to a very real fear of being sued for patent infringement.
Simon Maddox, a UK developer, has removed all his apps from US app stores on both iOS and Android for fear of being sued by Lodsys, a company which has already sued a number of iOS and Android developers which it says infringe its software patent.
Shaun Austin, another app developer based in Cheltenham, said that “selling software in the US has already reached the non-viable tipping point”.
And Fraser Speirs, a Scottish developer who has written apps for the Mac and iOS, remarked that he was “starting to get seriously concerned about my future as a software developer due to these patent issues”.
This situation has been exasperated by Mumbai, India, based Kootol Software who has launched a wide ranging lawsuit against companies like Microsoft, Apple and Google; and including some of the larger independant developers like Iconfactory which is most well known for its Twitter app Twitterrific.
The lawsuit claims that all these companies infringe upon Kootol Software’s patent, which is still in the application phase, that states - ”A Method and System for Communication, Advertising, Searching, Sharing and Dynamically Providing a Journal Feed”.
In other words anything to do with an RSS feed of any kind; which whether in XML format or the newer JSON format has become an integral way to transport information around the web.
Betenn Kootol Software and an earlier lawsuit by Lodsys against iOS app developers for the Apple platform there is a growing worry among developers that the financial dangers of developing apps is outweighing the benefits; and this is throwing a dark cloud over the Web as a whole.
There has been calls in the past for the US to revamp their patent and copyright laws to better reflect the modern technological world we live in but for the most part any change have been lobbied against by the entertainment industry and ironically by some of the very companies that are being sued today.
The fact is that if the US doesn’t finally join the modern world when it comes to copyrights and patents they could find that those two things will just become two more nails in their coffin as they slide into the technological backwater.
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Jul 17, 2011
Due Diligence
Here is the question that never seems to get asked any more: Did the apps developers even do a preliminary patent clearance search? It easy for people who are computer literate to do a quick search of the patent database with today’s tools to see if they are likely to infringe any patents.
If you were going to build a garage, a shed, a building, etc., you would first undertake a simple search to determine if I owned the land on which this structure was going to be built. This is just basic common sense. Why do we constantly excuse patent infringers for failing to do the simplest due diligence before they undertake building their products? A simple clearance search makes good business sense. It ensures that the company is not reinventing the wheel, it is good competitive market information, and it makes sure that you are not going to be sued for building on someone else’s property. Patent clearance searches are just good, basic business practices that too many lazy business fail to perform.
Jul 17, 2011
Dale, I think you missed the point. It's not about doing a patent search, it's about the broad reaching terminology in patents. For example the JSON/XML point is very clear, the company is suing company's that implement feed delivery into their products, even though the company with the patent didn't patent feed technology. Look at what Facebook has done…they patented "News Feed" not just as a term but as a method to deliver updates in social networks to friends in a feed format.
Jul 17, 2011
Now if a certain type of content delivery was created…for example the company initiating the lawsuit created JSON and was then building a product that is different. What stops company's from filing a patent that compiles 10 pieces of open source coding and calling it proprietary? Absolutely nothing….and that's a decidedly U.S. approach.
Jul 17, 2011
It's also important to realize that in most cases these patents won't stand up in court. A piece of technology used by various groups before a patent is grounds for developers to argue that the patent was received on a product that was already readily available and in use by various (in the case of RSS and JSON hundreds of thousands of users) before a patent was filed. While patents are easier to protect than Trademarks which need to be constantly guarded from becoming common terms "App Store" for example, Patents still much provide concrete proof of design/creation by the requesting party.