This book from Chris Stevens focuses on practical steps to designing a successful iPad application.  This is something that is fundamentally different from building a successful iPhone app, due to the differences between the devices.  Chris goes into a great amount of detail explaining how he went from a pencil sketch, to a best selling app, Alice, for the iPad.  While the book does have a fair amount of useful information, the chapter on the Chipmunk Physics engine was sadly out of place.

It’s a good solid read though overall.

Rating: 4.0/5.0

Where to buy:

Amazon.com – $25.39

Chapters.ca – $31,67

There has been a LOT of buzz on twitter the last few days over the fact that Lodsys has put a number of reasonably successful iOS developers on notice of infrigement of at least part of it’s patent portfolio.

A bit of background, partially from their site blog, and partially from other information that’s been bouncing around the web.

Dan Abelow, invented some tech back between 1988 and 1992.  This resulted in a number of patents applications being filed, and eventually 4 granted.  The main one in question, 7222078 has an interesting history.

From the US patent site:

This application is a continuation application of and claims priority to U.S. application Ser. No. 09/370,663, filed on Aug. 6, 1999, now abandoned which is a continuation of Ser. No. 08/934,457, filed Sep. 19, 1997, now U.S. Pat. No. 5,999,908, which is a continuation of Ser. No. 08/243,63 8, filed May 16, 1994, now abandoned, which is a continuation-in-part of Ser. No. 07/926,333, filed Aug. 6, 1992, now abandoned

So, we have a filing (07/926,333) in 1992, which was abandoned.

We have a continuation in part of that filing (08/243,638), from 1994 which was also abandoned.

We have a continuation of that one (08/934,457), from 1997 which resulted in patent 5,999,908 (also in Lodsys’s family)

We have a continuation of that patent (09/370,663) from 1999 which was abandoned.

And finally, we have filing 10/734,102, from 2003, which was granted as patent 7,222,078 in 2007.

There are a total of 4 patents owned by Lodsys:

• 5,999,908
• 7,222,078
• 7,133,834
• 7,620565

They claim that their patents are licensed by Apple, Microsoft and Google for their “nameplate products and services”.  The terms and restrictions of those licenses are unknown, and are likely to remain unknown.  It has been made clear that Apple at least, does not have the right to indemnify third part developers under their license.

From their blog:

In the case of an Application doing an in-application upgrade (and only this scenario), Lodsys is seeking 0.575% of US revenue over for the period of the notice letter to the expiration of the patent, plus applicable past usage.  So on an application that sells US$1m worth of sales in a year, the licensee would have an economic exposure of $5,750 per year.

Note that they are careful to not indicate what other uses of the patents they might be seeking fees for, or even which specific patent they are asking for a license.  I”d assume that more details have gone out in the letters, but that is unclear at this point.

So what are your options as a small indie developer?

1. Ignore it.  This will likely get you a follow up letter from their legal dept, indicating that subsequent infringement will be considered willful infringement. (aka triple damages).  If you opt for this, you’re hoping that someone else will succeed in invalidating the patents.
2. Accept it, and hand over the license fee.  This covers your butt, but at a cost. If you opt for this, I suggest you get legal advice on the wording of the license – cause if someone else manages to overturn the patent, you don’t want to keep paying for the next 6 years. It also leads to others with similar patents popping up to try to snag $$ from the little guys.  that 0.575% can rather rapidly turn into much larger numbers. (And that other might turn out to be Lodsys themselves – they are, after all, citing that rate for one given feature…)
3. Fight it.  This costs money.  Probably lots of it.  If you succeed, then you’re golden.  If not, well, you’ll have helped prove in court that the patents are more likely to be valid, and will probably get stuck paying a rather hefty set of fees to cover their costs.

Regardless of the path you think you should go on, I cannot strongly enough, suggest that you get legal advice from a real lawyer who specializes in patent law. Follow the threads on twitter, slashdot and so on.  Then make a choice.

Good luck.

Dan

Welcome to the third incarnation of our blog.
Third time is the charm.  Or is it bad things come in threes.  Sigh.

In any case, we’re here for a purpose – iOS development, with a focus on gaming.

Look for code snippets, tips and tricks, and reviews.  Got an app or an iOS dohickey you want me to talk about? I’d be happy to do so. I’m going to try to keep this updated on a triweekly basis – One post with Code, one with Reviews, and one with Misc stuff.

Cheers From Ottawa,
Dan