Posts Tagged: "app developers"

As a result of this announcement today, AOP will help Appsterdam accomplish the organizations mandate of supporting ongoing innovation and business success in the mobile app development community through research projects sent to its global, diverse and highly educated community. The Appsterdam Foundation attorneys and developers will work with AOP to conduct patent research, harnessing the global reach of the AOP community, which has been used by many Fortune 500 companies to locate prior art that can be used against patents asserted against them. While note every search conducted by Article One results in prior art that can be used to invalidate patent claims, many searches have found prior art that is then used in both federal court and at the United States Patent and Trademark Office during reexamination proceedings.

The question may arise – what if the result of crowdsourcing is less than the proverbial “smoking gun,” can it place the App Developers at a disadvantage in court? Case law indicates that the answer is no. Last year, in a patent litigation brought by Personal Audio LLC, the plaintiff attempted to argue that their patent was valid based on crowdsourced research and to seek discovery on this basis. Personal Audio lost on both counts, with federal Judge Miriam Cedarbaum concluding, “eliminating a negative doesn’t show validity” and commenting on the patent owner’s approach with the statement “that’s what I call desperation.” Transcript of Oral Argument and Decision at 12-13 and 14, Personal Audio LLC v. Sirius XM Radio, Inc. et al, No. M8-85 (S.D.N.Y. Nov. 2, 2010).

A developer of mobile applications, including children’s games for the iPhone and iPod touch, will pay $50,000 to settle Federal Trade Commission charges that it violated the Children’s Online Privacy Protection Act (COPPA) and the FTC’s COPPA Rule by illegally collecting and disclosing personal information from tens of thousands of children under age 13 without their parents’ prior consent. This is the Commission’s first case involving mobile applications, known as apps.

On Thursday, July 21, 2011, attorneys for Lodsys LLC, who is rapidly becoming a reviled patent troll, filed an amended complaint in the United States Federal District Court for the Eastern District of Texas. As a result of this amended complaint some big names in the gaming world have been brought into the ongoing patent litigation battles being waged by Lodsys, who has already suing a number of Apple App developers and others such as Best Buy and the New York Times, see here and here. More specifically, as a result of the filing of this latest complaint Lodsys has brought patent infringement charges against Atari Interactive, Inc. and Electronic Arts, Inc. (NASDAQ:ERTS), among others. But in the mind of the general public the highest profile defendant to date is no doubt Rovio Mobile Ltd., the maker of the extraordinarily popular game Angry Birds, which is available for iPhone, iPad and Android, among other platforms.

Article One Partners is at it again, this time with four patents in the cross-hairs owned by the company suing Apple App Developers for patent infringement — Lodsys. Article One Partners has made a name for itself as the premiere crowd sourcing, prior art locating company in the world. Now they have three different studies aimed squarely at the four Lodsys patents, which were just used earlier this week to sue the New York Times and others, and earlier still against Best Buy, Adidas, CVS and others. Indeed, it seems that Lodsys is becoming quite a nuisance for defendants, which places them at or near the top of the patent troll most wanted.