Rovio, the Finnish creators of Angry Birds, and four other software developers are the latest targets of the much-maligned Texas patent holding firm Lodsys.
The company claims that it holds a patent on technology that enables people to buy things inside mobile apps.
Lodsys late last week updated its initial complaint from May to include Atari, Electronic Arts, Square, Rovio and Take-Two Interactive Software, all makers of some of the most popular mobile apps on the market.
Rovio’s “Angry Birds” game was Apple’s top-selling app in 2010. Lodsys charges in its amended complaint that Angry Birds infringes upon its patent, as does Atari’s Greatest Hits app, Electronic Arts’ The Sims app, Square’s Big Hit Baseball app and Take-Two’s 2K Sports NHL 2K11.
Lodsys wants the companies to stop using the technology, as well as monetary damages for willful infringement.
The suit is being closely watched by the media and by developers who worry that they may have to pay additional licensing fees to the patent holding company Lodsys in addition to the existing percentage of revenues that they pay to Apple for selling their services on iOS, the iPhone, iTouch and iPad’s operating system.
Lawyers for Apple in June asked the judge in the case if it could intervene. In a filing, the company said that it has already paid Lodsys the licensing fees, and that it isn’t entitled to shaking down the developers for a second round.
Digital rights group the Electronic Frontier Foundation has criticized companies such as Lodsys for stifling innovation by wielding patents to extort money out of their successful businesses.
“The patent system is intended to promote innovation, but it seems pretty clear to us that here it’s doing just the opposite,” wrote EFF Attorney Julie Samuels in a recent blog post. “While we are disappointed that the proposed patent reform legislation does nothing to curb this problem, we will continue to monitor the situation and provide resources to as many developers as we can.”
Both the House and the Senate have approved their own versions of a sweeping patent reform law, and President Obama has made reforming the patent system a central “to do” item on his innovation agenda.
But the issue of patent licensing firms, and how they exercise their rights is a complex one, and it’s not clear that the legislation would do anything substantive to relieve software developers from the threat of such suits.
