apple
Apple Stands By Its Developers
In case you haven’t been following the tech news, it seems that recently iOS developers have been receiving cease and desist letters from Lodys who claims that the developers have not properly licensed the use of Lodys’s in app purchase patents and are now being threatened with patent-infringement lawsuits, unless they paid Lodys for the license. Developers have since started to appeal to Apple to see if this was true and what they could do about it.
In short it seems that Apple did the right thing and took a stand by its developers and basically issued a letter to Mark Small, the CEO of Lodys, saying that the license that Apple had purchased from Lodys for its patents covered developers who used the API to make in-app purchases. If you’re interested in reading the entire letter sent to Mark Small by Bruce Sewell (courtesy of Macworld) who is Senior VP and General Counsel for Apple, check it out after the break.
May 23, 2011
Mark Small
Chief Executive Officer
Lodsys, LLCDear Mr. Small:
I write to you on behalf of Apple Inc. (“Apple”) regarding your recent notice letters to application developers (“App Makers”) alleging infringement of certain patents through the App Makers’ use of Apple products and services for the marketing, sale, and delivery of applications (or “Apps”). Apple is undisputedly licensed to these patent and the Apple App Makers are protected by that license. There is no basis for Lodsys’ infringement allegations against Apple’s App Makers. Apple intends to share this letter and the information set out herein with its App Makers and is fully prepared to defend Apple’s license rights.
Because I believe that your letters are based on a fundamental misapprehension regarding Apple’s license and the way Apple’s products work, I expect that the additional information set out below will be sufficient for you to withdraw your outstanding threats to the App Makers and cease and desist from any further threats to Apple’s customers and partners.
First, Apple is licensed to all four of the patents in the Lodsys portfolio. As Lodsys itself advertises on its website, “Apple is licensed for its nameplate products and services.” See http://www.lodsys.com/blog.html (emphasis in original). Under its license, Apple is entitled to offer these licensed products and services to its customers and business partners, who, in turn, have the right to use them.
Second, while we are not privy to all of Lodsys’s infringement contentions because you have chosen to send letters to Apple’s App Makers rather than to Apple itself, our understanding based on the letters we have reviewed is that Lodsys’s infringement allegations against Apple’s App Makers rest on Apple products and services covered by the license. These Apple products and services are offered by Apple to the App Makers to enable them to interact with the users of Apple products-such as the iPad, iPhone, iPod touch and the Apple iOS operating system-through the use or Apple’s App Store, Apple Software Development Kits, and Apple Application Program Interfaces (“APIs”) and Apple servers and other hardware.
The illustrative infringement theory articulated by Lodsys in the letters we have reviewed under Claim 1 of U.S. Patent No. 7,222,078 is based on App Makers’ use of such licensed Apple products and services. Claim 1 claims a user interface that allows two-way local interaction with the user and elicits user feedback. Under your reading of the claim as set out in your letters, the allegedly infringing acts require the use of Apple APIs to provide two-way communication, the transmission of an Apple ID and other services to permit access for the user to the App store, and the use of Apple’s hardware, iOS, and servers.
Claim 1 also claims a memory that stores the results of the user interaction and a communication element to carry those results to a central location. Once again, Apple provides, under the infringement theories set out in your letters, the physical memory in which user feedback is stored and, just as importantly, the APIs that allow transmission of that user feedback to and from the App Store, over an Apple server, using Apple hardware and software. Indeed, in the notice letters to App Makers that we have been privy to, Lodsys itself relies on screenshots of the App Store to purportedly meet this claim element.
Finally, claim 1 claims a component that manages the results from different users and collects those results at the central location. As above, in the notice letters we have seen, Lodsys uses screenshots that expressly identify the App Store as the entity that purportedly collects and manages the results of these user interactions at a central location.
Thus, the technology that is targeted in your notice letters is technology that Apple is expressly licensed under the Lodsys patents to offer to Apple’s App Makers. These licensed products and services enable Apple’s App Makers to communicate with end users through the use of Apple’s own licensed hardware, software, APIs, memory, servers, and interfaces, including Apple’s App Store. Because Apple is licensed under Lodsys’ patents to offer such technology to its App Makers, the App Makers are entitled to use this technology free from any infringement claims by Lodsys.
Through its threatened infringement claims against users of Apple’s licensed technology, Lodsys is invoking patent law to control the post-sale use of these licensed products and methods. Because Lodsys’s threats are based on the purchase or use of Apple products and services licensed under the Agreement, and because those Apple products and services, under the reading articulated in your letters, entirely or substantially embody each of Lodsys’s patents, Lodsys’s threatened claims are barred by the doctrines of patent exhaustion and first sale. As the Supreme Court has made clear, “[t]he authorized sale of an article that substantially embodies a patent exhausts the patent holder’s rights and prevents the patent holder from invoking patent law to control postsale use of the article.” Quanta Computer, Inc. v. LG Elecs., Inc., 553 U.S. 617 (2008).
Therefore, Apple requests that Lodsys immediately withdraw all notice letters sent to Apple App Makers and cease its false assertions that the App Makers’ use of licensed Apple products and services in any way constitute infringement of any Lodsys patent.
Very truly yours,
Bruce Sewell
Senior Vice President & General Counsel
Apple Inc.
Way to go Apple, standing up for your developers!
Now here’s an iPhone 6S case that will certainly turn heads, especially when you take into consideration its name which is known as the OnePlus iPhone 6S case. That’s rather weird, don’t you think so? It will certainly take some getting used to before the name rolls off your tongue naturally. Well, we do know that The OnePlus iPhone 6S case can now be purchased for $19.99 a pop, and no, you do not need any kind of invite before you can snag one for yourself.
Each purchase will also be accompanied by an invitation to purchase a OnePlus X, just in case, you know, you would like to tread the Android waters. All in all, it comes in the kind of material as found on the OnePlus One and OnePlus X, which makes it a whole lot harder to lose grip of when you hold it – which is good!
If you are on the lookout for either the iPhone 6S or the iPhone 6S Plus, then here is news for you – chances are pretty high that you can pick up either one, or perhaps even both if you are feeling fat in the pocket, this coming September 18th. First of all, there was a leaked internal memo from Vodafone alongside Japanese site ITHome and German tech experts Macerkopf claiming that the new iPhones 6S models will roll out this coming September 18th in their respective countries
With Japan, Germany and the UK being tier one Apple launch countries, this means that those living in the mentioned countries will receive the iPhones at the same time as folks living over in the US – traditionally speaking, of course. There really isn’t that much time left to wait, as it is less than a month away, and I am quite sure that the time will pass by sooner than you think.
It looks like the folks over at Digitimes have come up with their own interpretation of things to come – that there will be no iPad Air 3 released, at least for this year. Digitimes has had their fair share of hits and misses in the past, so it would be best to take this rumor concerning the non-release of the iPad Air 3 in 2015 with a pinch of salt.
Digitimes also laid claim that the iPad mini 4 will not be as supercharged as some of the rumors that had been going around, as it will bring with it only small and incremental upgrades when compared to its predecessor, the iPad mini 3. This does not seem to bode well for fans of the compact tablet, taking into consideration how the iPad mini 3 itself was improved over its predecessor with a new Touch ID fingerprint reader.
Since Apple tends to roll out a new iPad in October, we will just have to sit tight and see whether this particular rumor has enough “legs” to run.