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Martha Stewart pastes a patent troll

by on30 September 2013



Renovating the patent market

Celeb decorating expert Martha Stewart is preparing give a patent troll a good pasting and hang it out to dry. At some point, the Lodsys patent troll thought that Stewart would be a soft target. It wrote to Martha Stewart inviting her to shell out $5000 to use its technology on her Weddings iPad app.

 

Lodsys launched a wave of legal threats against small app makers, demanding they pay for using basic internet technology like in-app purchases or feedback surveys. Most app companies, are two-horse outfits that agree to hand over a portion of their revenues rather than go up against Lodsys’ battery of lawyers and a Texas jury. Stewart has filed a lawsuit to crush the outfit.

In a federal court in Wisconsin, Martha Stewart Living Omnimedia asked a judge to declare that four magazine iPad apps are not infringing Lodsys’ patents, and that the patents are invalid because the so-called inventions are not new. By suing Lodsys and crushing its patents, Martha Stewart is choosing a far more expensive option. But she has a few allies in the campaign: tech rivals Google and Apple are also lining up against Lodsys in an effort to protect the app developers, and the Electronic Frontier Foundation this week filed an anti-Lodsys brief of its own.

The troll has responded to its critics by simply going on a new rampage, suing dozens more small companies and also its critics. 

 

Last modified on 02 October 2013
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