In order to defend smartphone application developers against patent holders, Google has intervened in an ongoing intellectual property dispute between Lodsys, complainant and Rovio and Illusion Labs, defendants, making it the search engine giant’s first public move to defend Android coders from patent troll lawsuits, reported Wired.com on Monday.
Google said it filed a request with the United States Patent and Trademark Office on Friday for reexamination of two patents asserted by Lodsys, to assess whether or not the patent’s claims are valid. Kent Walker, Google senior vice president and general consul explained, “We have asked the US Patent office to reexamine two Lodsys patents that we believe should never have been issued. Developers pay a crucial role in the Android ecosystem and Google will continue to support them.”
Suing 11 smartphone app developers for allegedly infringing the two patents U.S. 7,222,078 and 7,620,565, Lodsys claims its patents cover the use of in-app payments technology, which allows users to carry out transactions within the context of an app itself.
If the USPTO grants Google’s request for reexamination, it could end up saving the developers and development studios from large litigation fees. Julie Samuels, staff attorney for Electronic Frontier Foundation, a non-profit digital rights advocacy group commented, “Reexaminations are a tool often used to stay on-going litigation. It is much cheaper than federal litigation which on an average costs between two and five million dollars.”
Lodsys first began targeting application developers months ago, when they dispatched a series of cease and desist letters to iOS and Android app developers in May. The letters threatened legal action within a 21 day period if developers did not negotiate to pay Lodsys a licensing fee for the use of the technology. The company is now suing 11 defendants, from small app. development studios to major game companies like Atari, Square Enix and Electronic Arts.
Intellectual property experts refer to actions such as the one initiated by Lodsys as ‘patent trolling’ – the practice of using patents for the sole purpose of suing other companies for damages or forcing them into licensing agreements.
Google and Apple have licenses for Lodsys’ patents, so Lodsys has been suing third-party developers. Irrespective of the fact whether Lodsys wins or loses the lawsuit, the threat of potential litigation may serve as a hindrance for app. developers for both iOS and Android platforms.
Florian Mueller, an IP analyst said, “the strategic interest of Apple and Google, in this case, is to make app. developers happy or at least comfortable.”
On Monday, Apple attempted to insert itself into the Lodsys lawsuit on behalf of developers by claiming that it had the right to intervene in the case because it provides the in-app billing technology to its developers and retains its own license for the patents in question. Therefore, its license extends to coders who use Apple’s technology, the company argued.
Google has confirmed that they filed the request for reexamination, inter partes, which means that Google will be involved in the proceedings throughout the entire process. If a reexamination is granted, the patents in question could be amended to the extent that they won’t affect developers.
Samuels said, “Inter partes requests are usually more thorough. Ninety-five percent of ‘inter partes’ reexamination requests filed since 1999 have been granted by the USPTO.”
However, even if the USPTO grants the reexamination request there is no guarantee that the court will grant a stay and this could complicate things for the developer defendants and cost them money for ongoing litigation expenses.
Google’s reexamination request is strategically different from Apple’s action and if it turns out to be successful could be beneficial for all parties involved, with the sole exception of Lodsys.