lodsys

Oracle has filed a legal complaint against Lodsys -- the company that's taken aim at app makers on Apple's iOS, Google's Android, and other technology platforms for infringing on its patents -- with the hopes of invalidating them.

The enterprise software giant filed a suit against the Texas-based patent holder in a U.S. District Court in Wisconsin last week (via GigaOm), saying the firm has "repeatedly threatened numerous Oracle customers," and that the company isn't actually using any of the technology for anything besides getting revenue from other companies.

"Lodsys did not … Read more

Nearly a year after filing a request to intervene in a controversial case involving app developers being sued for using in-app purchase features, Apple has been given the go-ahead by a district court judge to step into the fray.

Intellectual property tracking blog Foss Patents reports that Texas judge James Rodney Gilstrap today granted Apple's original request, saying it could become a part of the proceedings as long as the company's role was "limited to the issues of license and patent exhaustion."

The case Apple's getting into is one kicked off by Lodsys, a Texas-based … Read more

Amazon's latest addition to its Appstore could very well ignite the ire of a litigious patent holder, and cause a new legal and monetary headache for app makers.

Amazon yesterday announced its in-app purchase service, offering developers a way to let users spend money inside of apps. While not a new feature among mobile apps, it adds new ways for developers to make revenue after an app has been downloaded, whether it was paid or free.

That particular mechanism, which has been available for app makers on Google's Android and Apple's iOS platforms for some time now, … Read more

Several months after rival Apple stepped in to put its weight behind fending off patent holder Lodsys from mobile developers, Google too has begun a public-facing effort against the nonpracticing entity.

Wired reports that Google filed a request with the United States Patent and Trademark office last night seeking a re-examination of two of the four Lodsys patents that have been used to target developers on both Google's and Apple's mobile development platforms.

"We've asked the U.S. Patent Office to re-examine two Lodsys patents that we believe should never have been issued," Kent Walker, … Read more

More than a month after Apple filed a motion to intervene as the defendant in a lawsuit from Lodsys that targets 11 application developers, Lodsys has filed a rebuttal seeking to get Apple's efforts denied.

In a heavily redacted document filed today in the U.S. District Court for the Eastern District of Texas Marshall Division, and picked up by blog Foss Patents, Lodsys notes that things have changed since Apple got involved. That includes who's been targeted by the suit, which was expanded last week to include a number of gaming giants like Atari, Electronic Arts, Rovio, … Read more

Lodsys, a group that's targeted companies big and small for infringing on its patents, has added five new defendants to a suit it filed back in May, including Electronic Arts and Rovio, the maker of the popular Angry Birds franchise.

In an amended complaint (PDF), filed today with the U.S. District Court for the Eastern District of Texas and picked up by patent-tracking blog Foss Patents, Lodsys has added a number of gaming heavyweights including Atari, Electronic Arts, Rovio, Square Enix, and Take-Two Interactive to the list of companies it says are violating patents it holds. That brings … Read more

Lodsys, the group that's gone after both mobile-application developers and large companies in defense of patents it holds, today filed a new patent infringement lawsuit aimed at The New York Times Co. and five others, all of which have previously taken legal action against it in separate court filings.

The suit (PDF), filed in the U.S. District Court, Eastern District of Texas, Marshall Division, takes aim at six parties: DriveTime Automotive Group, ESET, ForeSee Results, LivePerson, OpinionLab, and The New York Times Co. In its suit, Lodsys alleges that all of the companies are infringing on one or … Read more

Lodsys, a group that's targeted companies big and small for infringing on its patents, is now in the crosshairs of a company offering to pay a bounty for research that seeks to invalidate those patents.

Article One Partners, a business that crowdsources intellectual property (IP) research, has launched three new studies into patents held by Lodsys (1,2,3). Each offers a reward to the party that finds prior art, or examples of pre-existing technologies or other IP that could be used as evidence to invalidate one or more of Lodsys' patents.

Article One Partners became involved in a … Read more

Lodsys, the company pursuing high-profile patent infringement cases against many in the tech industry, is finding itself on the receiving end of a pre-emptive lawsuit challenging its patents.

ESET, a San Diego-based antivirus software maker, filed a declaratory judgment lawsuit (see filing below) on Friday against Lodsys with the U.S. District Court for the Southern District of California. The lawsuit, first reported by Florian Mueller of the FOSS Patents blog, seeks a declaration that its products do not infringe on Lodsys' four patents and to invalidate those patents.

Lodsys claimed in letters to ESET that the upgrade feature in … Read more