A few months ago I was telling you that an American company called Lodsys to sue iOS application developers accusing them of infringing patents in the applications sent to the App Store. It was about patents for the in-app purchases system licensed by Apple from Lodsys. Then Apple claimed that the license bought from Lodsys covers both its own use of the patents and the implementation made by the developers for the applications, so Lodsys would have no reason to sue the developers. Unfortunately, Lodsys saw its work quiet and after suing developers not affiliated with any application producer, now it is the turn of the big application producing companies to be notified that they have been sued.
Defendant Rovio has infringed and continues to infringe, directly, indirectly, literally, under the doctrine of equivalents, contributorily, and/or through the inducement of others, one or more claims of the '565 patent. Rovio makes, sells, uses, imports, and/or offers to sell infringing applications, including but not limited to Angry Birds for iPhone and Angry Birds for Android, which infringe at least claim 27 of '565 patent under 35 USC § 271.
Yesterday Lodsys updated its lawsuit filed in May in an American court by adding 5 new company names: Rovio, Electronic Arts, Atari, Square Enix and Take-Two Interactive. With yesterday's update, Lodsys has sued no less than 37 people and app developer companies for patent infringement. Apple promised to intervene to resolve the situation amicably, but it seems that for now no solution has been found and application developers may decide to withdraw their applications from the US App Store and not to introduce others.
Unfortunately for developers, Lodsys is also suing Android application producers and Google doesn't seem to take any measures to protect its developers.
