Apple has responded to the recent patent threats again iOS application developers by Lodsys. Bruce Sewell, Apple’s senior vice president and general counsel, sent a letter to Lodsys CEO Mark Small detailing why the threats are baseless. Apple claims they have a license to the patents in question, and that the iOS application developers are mere customers – not distributors.
The basic reasoning in Apple’s letter is pretty straightforward. Say you buy an iPhone. There’s a boatload of technology in there that Apple has had to buy patents for, but you as a customer don’t have to bother with that since any patent license Apple has obviously covers its customers as well. Apple is arguing that the same principle applies here; developers are merely customers of Apple’s APIs and backends – and they don’t need to care about any patents that cover these APIs and backends in the same way users don’t have to care about the patents covering an iPhone.
“Thus, the technology that is targeted in your notice letters is technology that Apple is expressly licensed under the Lodsys patents to offer to Apple’s App Makers. These licensed products and services enable Apple’s App Makers to communicate with end users through the use of Apple’s own licensed hardware, software, APIs, memory, servers, and interfaces, including Apple’s App Store,” Apple’s letter reads, “Because Apple is licensed under Lodsys’ patents to offer such technology to its App Makers, the App Makers are entitled to use this technology free from any infringement claims by Lodsys.”
I’m no lawyers, of course, but Apple’s reasoning here seems pretty sound to me. In the end, APIs are just part of an Apple product offering (say, an SDK), and developers are just users of that. They’re not actually implementing any new code that itself infringes on Lodsys’ patents, and as such.
Apple further states that the company will defend its application developers. “There is no basis for Lodsys’ infringement allegations against Apple’s App Makers. Apple intends to share this letter and the information set out herein with its App Makers and is fully prepared to defend Apple’s license rights,” Sewell states.
Now we await Lodsys’ response. I’m hoping Apple’s letter is enough of a deterrent so that the small-time application developers don’t have to worry.
Nice to see Apple doing something positive for a change.
Hurr durr, is the applenews.com domain already taken?
It resolves to IP address of 63.87.252.160 on my PC, so I’d say: yes, it is.
Anything else you need assistance with?
Ahh, but you see, they haven’t patented code that implements in-app purchases, they’ve patented the idea of in-app purchases.
So, if you consider OSAlert to be a web app, then the OSAlert premium button (does this still exists?) actually infringes said patent, and preys on the hard work of poor, poor Lodsys.
Stratoukos,
Yep, that’s pretty much how patents work these days. Patents encourage this type of behavior, and those who don’t play (because the system sucks all around) are the victims.
Dear Lodsys,
Cut your crap or we’ll sue you into oblivion.
Love,
Apple
Coming from one of the heavy-weight 300 pound gorillas in the room that right there can be quite helluva daunting.
I deeply dislike Apple and their behaviour generally and while I understand that they’re doing this only to keep developers using their App Store I still applaud them for doing the right thing, even if not for the correct reasons.
I’d applaud them more if they weren’t being so hypocritical.
It seems in “Apple-land”, they have the right to hold patents and thus sue competing organizations where as nobody else is allowed to.
I guess the key difference here is that Lodsys aren’t actually competing on anything – so if I had to pick sides I would hope for Apple. However the hypocrisy is still hard to swallow.
That is why I despise all patents.
Nowadays they don’t help at all. There was innovation before patents existed.
All companies are hypocrite, all of them make use of the patent system, and all of the big players complain about it, when they lose a big case.
Luckily so far in Europe we have manage to keep them away, I imagine for how long still.
What about industrial patents ? I don’t know how much they last, and under which terms they work (do they imply a precise description of the patented product, like technical drawings or chemical formulas, or can you patent ideas and algorithms ? Is there a requirement of notability, or can you patent an iPod Touch’s rounded corners ?)
Edited 2011-05-24 09:00 UTC
Yes you can (I think they did), It’s called a design patent. Another Idiocy as design is pretty much covered by copyright…
Actually, it’s more like they patented a significant part of the casing, but although this patent makes me laugh to no end, I have to admit that it’s not a pure “rounded corner” patent. The patent also includes things like a description of the holding springs and detailed steps of the manufacturing process, so it’s not something ridiculously obvious, imprecise, and impossible to avoid.
http://patft.uspto.gov/netacgi/nph-Parser?Sect1=PTO1&Sect2=HITOFF&d…
Edited 2011-05-24 12:45 UTC
Its probably made millions for all of these inventor help companies, that cost a fortune and you just end up with a design patent worth nothing.
Even corporations can do bad things some of the times and good things other times. Applaud them for the good, and criticize them for the bad. In this case, Apple is doing the right thing for the right reason.
Its absolutely insane to think that an application developer is liable for the functionality provided deeper inside an api. It woudl destroy third party development on any operating system that has licensed ip. Even the MIAA isn’t that insane. The concept makes h264 licensing seem reasonable.
Edited 2011-05-24 15:07 UTC
I’d love to say this were true, but thats the problem with patent trolls:
they produce nothing, they create nothing only litigation.
As far as I know, without an actual product, you have nothing to sue them over. They need to have a product that allegedly infringes on one of your patents to be able to sue them.
The only thing one can do against patent trolls is go though the long drawn out process of trying to prove their patents are invalid.
Edited 2011-05-24 12:51 UTC
Well, what goes around comes around. Apple abuses the patent system in the exact same way as Lodsys does. Apple complaining about Lodsys’ actions is incredibly hypocritical.
But then, I’ve come to expect nothing less from technology companies, and Apple in particular.
Dear Lodsys CEO
Please contact Darl McBride and find out what the wilderness looks like.
Love
Steve