● 05.16.11

●● Patents Roundup: Lodsys, Microsoft, Versata, and Rambus

Posted in Patents at 9:27 am by Dr. Roy Schestowitz

Summary: Patent news from the past few days

• iOS developers receive legal threats over in-app purchasing (as noted before, even back in February)

• Lodsys v. Apple Devs: FUD for the App Store Era?

• Lodsys Speaks Out About iOS In-App Purchase Threats

• Lodsys Claims Patent To ‘Upgrade’ Button, Sues App Store Developers

As reported earlier, multiple developers have received demand letters from Lodsys over US7,222,078. One of the developers is James Thomson, developer of DragThing and PCalc. Thomson reports, “In the claim against pCalc, it was the 59p “Theme Pack” they used in their example. This isn’t just about ‘upgrade to full version’”.

• Odom v. Microsoft: Using Your Own Patents as Prior Art (as mentioned last week)

An interesting aspect of this set-up is the way that Microsoft used its patent as a priority document to help establish its freedom to operate rather than as intellectual property per se. Microsoft could have achieved the same results by simply publishing its prior invention. Likewise, in the US, Microsoft could have relied on its prior-inventor rights under 35 U.S.C. 102(g). However, the patent-as-prior-art approach has a number of advantages over these alternatives. Of course, alternative approaches are not mutually exclusive and instead can each be part of a layered strategy of protection.

• Versata wins $345M in patent lawsuit (mentioned some days ago)

• The Rambus Opinions: CAFC rules on the ‘reasonable forseeability’ of litigation (we wrote about Rambus submarine patents in posts such as [1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9])

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