IOS devs put out a call to unite against Lodsys, other patent trolls

[nkassis]

I guess I wasn't following the Lodsys thing but I had not heard that they bought the patent in question from Intellectual Ventures? I guess Intellectual Ventures is using 3rd parties to troll.

[SolarUpNote]

Is Lodsys a "shell company" of Intellectual Ventures?

http://www.thisamericanlife.org/radio-archives/episode/441/w...

[SODaniel]

Would be a little more 'powerful' if Apple weren't one of the largest software patent abusers.

[scotto]

I don't know who renowned iOS developer Mike Lee is, but I think this is fantastic. The only way small timers can effect this legal change is to band together like a union. And we've seen how powerful a union can be.

Trolls are going down, man.

[flyosity]

He's a well-known figure in the indie Mac & iPhone communities and is a co-founder of Tapulous and also worked on Delicious Library for Mac. If anyone in this community could do a good job in this fight, it's Mike.

[kragen]

You may not have heard of this, but a union of companies is called a "trust", and there's an entire division of the Department of Justice devoted to preventing them from forming, and destroying them when they do arise: http://www.justice.gov/atr/

[theb83]

> I don't know who renowned iOS developer Mike Lee is

Apparently, he's a man who develops software for a proprietary, patent-encumbered platform owned by a company who uses patents offensively. Presumably it's acceptable to use iPatents predatorily because they're broadly linked to a gadget he likes. Or maybe this is just how you think different.

[nextparadigms]

"Imagine a law that allows small software companies to opt out of the patent system."

That's a very interesting idea - startups opting out of the patent system, and then they won't be sued by other companies claiming patent infringement, but it will also mean they don't get to sue others for patent infringement either, even when they get to become a big company. It seems like a fair idea.

[onemoreact]

If anyone get's to ignore patents then the whole idea of patents as a safe means of discloser becomes somewhat meaningless. I have no problems abolishing software / business process patents, but if a small company can manufacture any patented drug you greatly undermine the value of new drugs.

[waterhouse]

I think this would mostly amount to the same thing as abolishing patents. Whenever a big company wanted to do something, it could create a new, small, special-purpose company--which just happens to have employees that used to work for the big company, who are paid exactly the same as they were before, and which shares an office with and gets funded by the big company, and so on--to develop the new product. It'd license all of its existing patents to the small company, too [actually, that'd be unnecessary, if the small company has opted out of the patent system]. And maybe the small company would refrain from applying for a patent on anything, but it'd allow the big company (exclusively) to learn what it does, and the big company would apply for (and get) the patents. Only the patents wouldn't do much good, because other companies that followed this strategy would probably be invulnerable to patent lawsuits.

[res0nat0r]

How does one opt-out of the patent system? Isn't that like saying I opt-out of the US legal system, now I am free do do any drug I like because I don't recognize the US legal system as an authority? That doesn't seem to work.

[jjtheblunt]

Just make patents non transferrable, but licensable. Is that not what they were intended to be, with the oversight that let them be transferrable the root of all the dysfunction?

[extension]

How is that the root of all dysfunction? If trolls can't buy patents, they will cut some other deal with inventors that has the same effect. Or they will just "invent" things themselves[1].

[1] http://googlepublicpolicy.blogspot.com/2009/03/patent-reform...

[acabal]

Not to sound too cynical, but if companies like MS, Apple, IBM, Google, etc. have spent the last 20 years amassing billion-dollar patent war-chests and are still giving in to patent trolls, and they haven't managed to get the system changed yet--what chance do a handful of game developers have?

[doctoboggan]

Because those companies also benefit from patents. It takes people who are willing to give up the patent system all together to fix it.

[nextparadigms]

Which is exactly why they don't want the patent system abolished or dramatically crippled right now. I don't think Google would care as much if the patent system is abolished. As far as I know they don't license their technology to others and they haven't sued others for patent infringement. They only use them as a defense against others, but it would be a win for them if all software patents would be abolished. They might not push for exactly that right now, but I don't think they would be very upset about it if that happened.

[noinput]

I own trollsys.com. Happy to donate it to the cause.

[DenisM]

So, where do we sign up?

[DeusExMachina]

Stay tuned. Soon announcements to sign up will be made on Appsterdam website at http://appsterdam.rs and on Mike's blog at http://mur.mu.rs

[terhechte]

Fantastic Idea!

[Tichy]

I hope they don't forget to unite against Apple.

[stephth]

What do you mean?