Hasta La Gadget!

It’s taken the US Patent and Trademark Office four and half years to consider it, but Facebook now finally has a patent on one of its central features: photo tagging. Applied for in October 2006 and just granted this week, this legal doc gives Mark Zuckerberg and a couple of his buddies credit for designing a method for identifying users in “a selection of an item of digital media.” That could be photos, video, audio, or text — the main drive of the patent is that it lets people associate a given chunk of media with a person and inform others of this association. The wording of Facebook’s claims is rather specific — you have to, for example, allow the identified person the opportunity to reject the identification — so having this patent need not necessarily preclude other sites like Flickr from engaging in similar, but not identical, behavior.

Facebook granted patent for tagging digital media originally appeared on Engadget on Thu, 19 May 2011 03:56:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Patent firm Lodsys wants a cut every time little Timmy buys a new content pack for Pocket God.  Photo: Emmanuelle Bourgue/Flickr

After threatening last week to sue several iPhone app programmers for implementing a new iOS feature, a patent firm touched off a storm of controversy and even received death threats.

Now the company has explained why it’s going after the little guys, instead of Apple: Lodsys says Apple has licensed the patent in question.

“The scope of their current licenses does NOT enable them to provide ‘pixie dust’ to bless another (3rd party) business applications [sic],” Lodsys writes in a blog post about Apple. “From Lodsys’ perspective, it is seeking to be paid value for rights it holds and which are being used by others.”

Incidentally, Microsoft and Google have also paid for licenses, too, according to Lodsys.

Lodsys sent letters last week to a number of iPhone app developers, accusing them of infringing a patent related to the usage of an “upgrade” button that customers can use to upgrade from a free version of an app to a paid version, or to make purchases from within an app.

Lodsys says that it wants 0.575% of U.S. revenue for any app using its technology.

Apple provides the “in-app billing” infrastructure programmers use to process payments from within their apps, which Lodsys says infringes its patent. In-app billing has been available to iPhone app developers since October 2009, and Apple added support for selling in-app subscriptions to serial content in February 2011.

Not a cease-and-desist letter but rather a warning, the Lodsys letter was meant to encourage developers to “engage in a licensing discussion,” the firm wrote on its blog. However, Lodsys gave the recipients 21 days to comply or else face a lawsuit.

Programmers who said they have received the complaint include James Thomson, creator of the scientific calculator app PCalc; Dave Castelnuovo, creator of the best-selling game Pocket God; and Matt Braun, developer of the popular iPhone kids’ game MASH.

Many apps use Apple’s in-app payment system, so the number of companies to receive the legal threat could soon grow much larger.

James Thomson, developer of the PCalc app, says he has asked Apple’s legal team for help.

Apple did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

We thought Clearwire might have had a chance at legal victory against Sony Ericsson, but the wireless carrier has apparently dropped out of the ring. Clearwire told a federal court it no longer plans to produce a smartphone — which basically nullified Sony Ericsson’s worry that upcoming Clearwire handsets would oh-so-similar swirling orb logo. As a result, Sony Ericsson’s reporting today that it’s dropped the trademark infringement lawsuit, which sounds good for all involved, except it leaves Clearwire not producing much of anything now.

Clearwire ditches plans to produce phones, satisfied Sony Ericsson drops logo lawsuit originally appeared on Engadget on Sat, 14 May 2011 18:03:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Apple's App Store is home to 400,000 apps from third-party programmers. Photo: Jon Snyder/Wired.com

If your pockets aren’t deep enough to fight a corporate giant, then sue the little guys for milk money.

That’s the idea behind a patent company’s legal threats against several independent iPhone app programmers rather than Apple.

Several iOS programmers on Friday morning said they received a legal complaint from Lodsys, a patent-holding firm.

Lodsys is accusing the developers of infringing a patent related to the usage of an “upgrade” button that customers can use to upgrade from a free version of an app to a paid version, or to make purchases from within an app.

Apple provides the payment technology that programmers embed inside their apps, but the Lodsys complaint is instead aimed squarely at the programmers using Apple’s in-app purchasing system.

Programmers who say they have received the complaint include James Thomson, creator of the scientific calculator app PCalc; Dave Castelnuovo, creator of the best-selling game Pocket God; and Matt Braun, developer of the popular iPhone kids game MASH.

Many apps use Apple’s in-app payment system, so the number of companies to receive the legal threat could soon grow much larger.

“Just got hit by very worrying threat of patent infringement lawsuit for using in-app purchase in PCalc Lite. Legal docs arrived via fedex,” Thomson tweeted Friday morning.

Programmers who have received the complaint say that Lodsys is demanding that they negotiate for a license to use the “upgrade” technology within 21 days, or a lawsuit will be filed.

This incident is an example of a practice that many in the industry would call “patent trolling,” which means using patents for little purpose other than to sue other companies until they cough up damages or licensing fees.

Lodsys did not respond to a request for comment.

On its website, Lodsys claims ownership of patents related to technologies that “provide for online purchasing of consumable supplies” and “sell upgrades or complimentary products,” among others.

Lodsys is based in eastern Texas, which is home to a federal court that often sides with patent holders. Patent lawyers around the world know that the easiest and quickest way to win a patent-related dispute is to file the complaint in Marshall, Texas. As a result, many defendants choose to settle instead of fight.

“One concern is that if we are the lightning rod, it could end up being pretty expensive for us, because they would choose to sue us no matter what our argument is,” Pocket God creator Castelnuovo told Wired.com.

Apple did not respond to a request for comment. It’s unclear whether the company will get involved in the patent dispute.

However, it seems likely that Apple will intervene. If Lodsys sues or imposes licensing fees on iOS programmers, it would deter developers from building apps for the iPhone, iPad and iPod Touch, and would hurt the ecosystem as a whole. Also, Apple takes 30 percent of each in-app sale, so it would lose money if Lodsys were to succeed.

See Also:

• Patent ‘Troll’ Sues Apple, Google Over Wireless E-mail
• EFF Decries ‘Sham’ Copyright-Troll Legal Tactics
• Apple Sued Over Keyboard Patent: Troll Suspected
• Paul Allen Files Patent Lawsuits Against Entire Web … Except Microsoft

Science! It’s the heady stuff that keeps the looneys in check and our feet planted on the earth. Back it up with a powerful CTIA lobbying effort and science can even move San Francisco policy. The San Francisco Chronicle is reporting that The City’s law requiring cellphone retailers to label each device’s SAR level as tested by the FCC has been put on indefinite hold, with a watered-down version likely taking its place. Surely, this is yet another example of big business and government colluding to the detriment of man? Not really, not this time. As Joel Moskowitz, director at the IC Berkeley Center for Family and Community Health, and even the FCC will tell you, the SAR value is a poor measurement of radiation intake for consumers:

“The specific absorption rate isn’t a very useful measure because it’s the peak reading on a variety of tests conducted on cell phones to measure their radiation, but doesn’t indicate the average amount of radiation a user would generally be exposed to. You could buy a lower SAR phone, but on average it could produce more radiation than a higher SAR phone.”

Although changes to the law have not yet been formally introduced, they’ll likely result in retailers handing out “tip sheets” to customers that explain how to minimize radiation exposure from their new handsets. Ok, you win this time, reason, but we can still debate image artifacting on certain long-form birth certificates… to the choppa!

San Francisco backs away from cellphone radiation law, will distribute common sense instead originally appeared on Engadget on Fri, 06 May 2011 06:11:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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