Lodsys sues 7 app developers in Eastern Texas; Mac and Android devs also targeted

“Today — on Tuesday, May 31, 2011 — Lodsys filed a lawsuit with the U.S. District Court for the Eastern District of Texas (the place in which I predicted that it would do so) against seven little iOS app developers,” Florian Mueller reprots for FOSS Patents.

“Lodsys asserts two of its four patents: U.S. Patent No. 7,620,565 (‘the ‘565 patent’) on a ‘customer-based design module’ and U.S. Patent No. 7,222,078 (‘the ‘078 patent’) on ‘Methods and Systems for Gathering Information from Units of a Commodity Across a Network,'” Mueller reports. “Note that Lodsys so far emphasized the ‘078 patent, although Lodsys always mentioned its other patents as well.”

Mueller reports, “Very importantly, this lawsuit is not limited to iOS but also targets Android in at least one case… [along with] the Mac version of Twitterriffic, which is explicitly accused in the complaint.”

Read more in the full article here.

Related articles:
Lodsys also threatens Android developers with legal action over in-app purchases – May 27, 2011
Full text: Apple Legal’s letter to Lodsys – May 23, 2011
Apple: iOS developers already licensed for Lodsys patents – May 23, 2011
EFF calls on to Apple defend iOS developers in Lodsys legal threats – May 21, 2011
Following Lodsys legal threats, Apple reportedly stops approving iOS apps with In-App Purchases – May 18, 2011
Lodsys defends legal threats: Apple is licensed, iOS developers are not – May 16, 2011
Lodsys threatens Apple App Store devs with lawsuit over In-App Purchases – May 13, 2011

30 Comments

  1. This is going to be interesting. So what did Apple license, if Lodsys can go after app developers as well?

    I would love to see Apple swoop in here and offer to defend all the app developers from Lodsys, then hand it to these guys. Apple licensed their IP in good faith, and now they’re just getting greedy.

    It would be funny if the court eventually found their patents to be invalid!

  2. Pathetic f*cks. They are avoiding my calls on my patent for a “beige painted metal box with electronic bits inside”. I am sure they are using my “invention” without having paid me any licensing fees.

  3. What’s the status of that bill in the Texas legislature (aka the National Laboratory for Bad Government — we miss you Molly Ivins) forcing the loser to pay all the costs for a crap lawsuit?

    1. Perry signed it into law yesterday.

      But i think Silverhawk1 is right, may be texans vs texans though.

      But.. another state down, the more that pass tort reform laws like this, the Federal laws will become easier to pass.

  4. Another reason to be suspicious of the motives behind Lodsys: the original 21-day deadline they gave small developers would have expired right around the weekend before WWDC. How much you want to bet their original plan was to unleash their lawsuits during the WWDC keynote on 6/6?

    In other possibly coincidental news, US antitrust oversight of Microsoft ended May 12. Lodsys started their legal threats May 13.

  5. Wondering if the plaintiff would request the court to exclude iPhone/iPad/iPod users during voir dire. You could wind up with a jury full of Apple haters, and in that venue, jurors tend to vote their personal resentments.

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