Lodsys has stepped up its battle with Apple and app developers over the alleged infringement of its intellectual property.
The company filed suit against seven developers in the patent trolls’ favoured district, East Texas. It explained in a blog post that it had chosen ‘to move its litigation timing to an earlier date than originally planned, in response to Apple’s threat, in order to preserve its legal options.’
Lodsys said that it fundamentally disagreed with Apple’s analysis, set out in a letter from Apple chief legal counsel, Bruce Sewell, to Lodsys CEO, Mark Small last week. It even offered $1,000 to ‘each entity to whom we have sent an infringement notice for infringement on the iOS platform, or that we send a notice to in the future, if it turns out that the scope of Apple’s existing license rights apply to fully license you with respect to our claim relating to your App on Apple iOS.’
In addition to iOS apps, Lodysys is suing one of the developers, Illusion Labs, over an Android version of its app, Labyrinth.
Writing about the latest developments on his blog, Foss Patents, intellectual property expert, Florian Mueller, explained that ‘For the app developers who have been sued, this is now a very critical situation…The most important thing for those app developers is to clarify with Apple — and to the extent that Android apps are involved, with Google — whether they will be held harmless and receive blanket coverage including possible damage awards.’
Mueller explained that he believes Lodsys has a ‘Plan A and a Plan B.’ It wants Apple and Google to pay up to licence its patent on behalf of developers, but if that doesn’t work, it will pursue developers individually.
Neither Apple nor Google have responded to the latest development.
