This is just a short update on what is happening with the Lodsys patent dispute. Lodsys filed a suit against 7 app developers in East Texas (what a surprise). The companies affected are 6 Apple and one Android: Combay, Iconfactory, Illusion Labs AB, Shovelmate, Quickoffice, Richard Shinderman, and Wulven Game Read more…
Imagine that you are a software developer, you hire programmers to produce real applications and offer them to the public. You produce innovative products, engage with customers, and sell quality applications. The software market is competitive, but you are doing relatively well. Then one day a letter arrives out of Read more…
The long-awaited Hargreaves report entitled Digital Opportunity: A Review of Intellectual Property and Growth, has been published. Several of the report´s elements had been leaked in advance, so the provisions do not come as a surprise. The motivation for setting up the review reportedly came from a meeting between UK’s Read more…
Google has just lost a patent infringement suit in Texas (where else?) which could have nefarious consequences for open source development in the United States. A Texas jury has awarded Bedrock Computer Technologies $5 million USD when it found that the search engine giant had infringed one of its software Read more…
I have finally finished reading SAS Institute Inc v World Programming Ltd (the IPKat beat me to it). This is an important software copyright case for many reasons. After a decade of mostly software patent cases in English courts, it is refreshing to see a complex software case where it Read more…
Online auction giant eBay has been sued for $3.8 billion USD by XPRT Ventures in a patent infringement suit over its use of PayPal as its preferred payment system. Do not adjust your monitors ladies and gentlemen, you read correctly, that is $3.8 billion dollars, enough money to buy a Read more…
This one is a bit puzzling. Microsoft holds several software patents, just like any other large tech company. However, they are not known to litigate, and mostly engage in cross-licensing agreements with their portfolio (remember Novell?). But now Microsoft has sued cloud computing and consumer relationship management provider Salesforce for Read more…
I’ve finally watched the excellent video “Patent Absurdity: how software patents broke the system”, and I highly recommend it. It contains several interviews surrounding the Bilski case in the U.S. Supreme Court, with commentary from some of the biggest names in the software patent debate. I will let the video Read more…
Last week several news sources reported on the publication of a patent on news feeds granted to Facebook, but I didn’t want to comment until I had read it in full. Behold US Patent 7,669,123, protecting a system that dynamically provides “a news feed about a user of a social Read more…
The UK Intellectual Property Office has ruled in favour of an application for an invention implemented in software, and therefore complies with section 1(2) of the 1977 Patent Act. The controversy involves patent application GB2407893A by Nokia which protects “a method of rapid software application development for a wireless mobile Read more…