This is one of those frustrating news items that has the propensity to wind-up everybody and generate a heck of a lot of bad publicity for the key protagonist waving his patents.
Charles Arthur over at The Guardian reports that some enterprising software patent owners have decided to have-a-go at mobile application developers that they fear might be infringing their intellectual property.
Charles quotes a few developers, including MIR favourite, Mr Simon Maddox, who are, I think it is fair to say, understandably running scared over the potential fallout.
Charles reports that Simon has taken the rather dramatic step of withdrawing all his applications from US app stores (on all platforms). Why? Well, he doesn’t want any problems.
I wouldn’t either.
If I was making a wicked living from my mobile apps, the last thing I need is some 800lb Gorilla arriving and demanding royalties. That would be a very bad day, especially since the moment I have to even think about the issue, it’ll cost me £300 per hour on legal fees. Yeah. No thanks.
Here’s one of the issues that’s giving folk the willies:
Meanwhile Kootol Software of Mumbai announced that it has sent a notice to Microsoft, Apple, Yahoo, Google, IBM, Research in Motion, LinkedIn, MySpace, Research in Motion and a number of other companies – including Iconfactory – claiming that they infringe US patent application 11/995,343 – “A Method and System for Communication, Advertising, Searching, Sharing and Dynamically Providing a Journal Feed” – which it said has also been applied for in India, Canada and Europe.
It says that patent it is seeking is an invention which “allows the user to publish and send messages using one way or two way messaging and by subscribing to posts of other users of a network. By indexing each message of each user the system provides real time search capabilities to users of the network in turn creating a unique form of communication.”
Yeah. I think it’s a pile of rubbish too.
An ‘invention’?
Oh come off if.
But let’s not get into the nitty gritty.
The last thing the big platforms need is for their developers to get cold feet and start panicking about getting sued. The marketplace dynamic relies on independent and small developers innovating the hell out of the rest of the market, running fast and responding swiftly to end-consumer needs. This is why there’s half-a-billion-trillion apps out there for iPhone. Everyone piled in. Everyone messed around. Some lucky developers found small niche markets for their products. Other even luckier ones got big very, very fast.
The key point is that the consumer was delighted. And the platform’s value grew and grew. This is the case with Apple and, to a lesser extent, the other platforms.
Can you imagine what would happen if Apple had 50% of apps removed from sale because of patent fears? This is somewhat conceivable.
One would imagine that patent holders would only attack the biggies — the companies with money. But you only have to look at the mindless antics of the record industry to see some people have no qualms suing individuals who don’t have a room full of lawyers.
The fear, though. That’s the problem.
Pulling your apps is a highly sensible precaution if you think you’re anywhere near infringing on a patent. We only know about these particular problems because of the post from Charles. Chances are, the next app you’re working on could well already have a patent lurking somewhere that you’re infringing.
But if you’re a developer with £500 in the bank, are you going to spend the resource checking this out? No.
The continued threat of a patent problem could have hundreds of thousands of application developers pulling their apps from multiple platforms.
Indeed, if you really, really want to screw up Apple, one would imagine that you should setup a company, invent a lot of useless stupid patents — or buy some existing ones for a lump of dosh — and set-about PR’ing the hell out of your infringement war, scaring all and sundry and demanding millions in compensation from each developer. You obviously wouldn’t need to go through with it to have an effect on Apple. Twitter, Facebook (and now Google+) mean that our world is super-hyper-amazingly connected. Developers even more so. What would happen to Apple’s share price if this practice became widespread?
One solution is to use some of the $70-odd-billion-dollars to buy up the problem companies and shut them down. Job done. Another would be to counter-sue. This would go on for years and put the willies up everyone though. Or Apple could arrange a global license fee that applies to the platform as a whole, so developers aren’t involved. Another possible alternative would be for Apple to indemnify every registered iOS developer with unlimited liability for these kinds of patent claims. That would give a lot of reassurance.
As for the other competing platforms such as Nokia/Windows, WebOS, RIM, Bada and, to a lesser extent, Android, a similar indemnification shield would be useful for attracting and retaining developer attention.
This is one of those issues that’s worth keeping in the back of your mind. It could easily, easily turn into a News of the World style debacle for Apple — I think they’ve got the most to lose from this, given their scale.
Perhaps the issue will simply go away? We’ll see.
Meanwhile, I hope the platforms take note of the plight of some of their developers.