Patent Troll Pisses Off Martha Stewart, Hell Hath No Fury
It's been said that prison changes a person, and it takes a foolhardy person to go messing around with an ex-convict. That's true even if that ex-convict is Martha Stewart. Perhaps especially if she's Martha Stewart. Behind that charismatic smile and underneath the persona that's obsessed with cooking and homemaking is a woman who became known as M. Diddy (no joke) during her time behind bars for her involvement in insider trading. Well, someone went and poked M. Diddy with a stick and they're about to get mauled.
To be more specific, a shell company called Lodsys invoked M. Diddy's wrath by claiming that the Martha Stewart Weddings app for Apple's iPad infringes its patents. According to Gigaom, Lodsys is nothing more than a lowly patent troll that goes around threatening legal action against small time app makers, attempting to strong-arm them into paying for technologies like in-app purchases and feedback surveys.
In many cases it works, and that's because Lodsys typically goes after targets that are one or two-man operations that are likely to be intimidated by the company's team of lawyers. However, this time Lodsys may have bitten off more than its legal hounds can chew by attempting to get Martha Stewart to pay $5,000 per license that it claims her app infringes.
Instead of buckling like an individual is apt to do, Martha Stewart Living Omnimedia filed a complaint asking a judge to declare that her company's four magazine apps for the iPad are not infringing patents owned by Lodsys, and further declare that the patents are invalid to begin with. In other words, she's trying to crush the patent troll by taking away its ability to not only win this case, but to sue anyone else.
To be more specific, a shell company called Lodsys invoked M. Diddy's wrath by claiming that the Martha Stewart Weddings app for Apple's iPad infringes its patents. According to Gigaom, Lodsys is nothing more than a lowly patent troll that goes around threatening legal action against small time app makers, attempting to strong-arm them into paying for technologies like in-app purchases and feedback surveys.
In many cases it works, and that's because Lodsys typically goes after targets that are one or two-man operations that are likely to be intimidated by the company's team of lawyers. However, this time Lodsys may have bitten off more than its legal hounds can chew by attempting to get Martha Stewart to pay $5,000 per license that it claims her app infringes.
Instead of buckling like an individual is apt to do, Martha Stewart Living Omnimedia filed a complaint asking a judge to declare that her company's four magazine apps for the iPad are not infringing patents owned by Lodsys, and further declare that the patents are invalid to begin with. In other words, she's trying to crush the patent troll by taking away its ability to not only win this case, but to sue anyone else.
