Lodsys Patent Invalidation Efforts: Apple Barred? $15,000 Bounty for Crowdsourced Research

Lodsys, the patent holding company currently taking on App Store developers over their use of in app purchasing and upgrade buttons, is under increasing attack as it continues to push forward with its own actions while its targets have begun to fight back. Last week, we noted that the first legal challenge had been brought seeking to invalidate Lodsys' patents, and three other companies, including the parent company of The New York Times, have since filed similar suits against Lodsys.

But while Apple has stepped forward and asked to intervene in Lodsys' case against the App Store developers, arguing that Apple's own license extends to developers using its tools, the company has not joined the effort to have the patents themselves invalidated. FOSS Patents now reports that Apple (and Google, whose developer ecosystem is also being targeted by Lodsys) may actually be barred from challenging the patents by virtue of their licensing agreements already in place with Lodsys.

None of the attorneys I talked to knows the language of the license agreement Apple and Google signed with Intellectual Ventures while the four patents later acquired by Lodsys belonged to that entity. But they and I concur that it's highly likely that Apple and Google are contractually precluded from challenging Lodsys's patents because such license agreements often come with clauses under which a licensee will lose a license once he participates in an effort to invalidate any of the related patents (in addition to possibly having to pay contractual penalties).

So even if Apple and Google had wanted to attack Lodsys's patents proactively, they would have lost their license -- at least to any patent they attack; more likely to all four Lodsys patents; and possibly even to any or all of the more than 30,000 patents they licensed from Intellectual Ventures, a patent aggregator in which those companies (alongside many other industry players) invested.

Consequently, Apple may be limited to simply defending App Store developers with respect to the terms of Apple's licensing, and not able to directly attack the patents themselves.

lodsys invalidation bounties
But that does not mean that Lodsys' patents are safe by any means. In addition to the four invalidation lawsuits already filed against Lodsys, CNET reports that crowdsourcing intellectual property research firm Article One Partners has launched a series of bounties for information on prior art or other issues that could help in the effort to invalidate Lodsys' patents.

Article One Partners, a business that crowdsources intellectual property (IP) research, has launched three new studies into patents held by Lodsys. Each offers a reward to the party that finds prior art, or examples of pre-existing technologies or other IP that could be used as evidence to invalidate one or more of Lodsys' patents.

Each of the three studies carries a $5,000 bounty guaranteed to be paid out to the researchers who submit what is judged to be the "highest quality prior art" to be used in attacking Lodsys' patents.

It is unknown who is funding the bounties on Lodsys' patents, as that information is not disclosed by Article One Partners. Article One is, however, an established company with a community of around one million people participating in crowdsourced intellectual property research on a variety of topics.

Popular Stories

iPhone 17 Pro Blue Feature Tighter Crop

iPhone 17 Pro Launching in Three Months With These 12 New Features

Saturday June 14, 2025 5:45 pm PDT by
The iPhone 17 Pro and iPhone 17 Pro Max are three months away, and there are plenty of rumors about the devices. Below, we recap key changes rumored for the iPhone 17 Pro models as of June 2025:Aluminum frame: iPhone 17 Pro models are rumored to have an aluminum frame, whereas the iPhone 15 Pro and iPhone 16 Pro models have a titanium frame, and the iPhone X through iPhone 14 Pro have a...
iPadOS 26 App Windowing

Apple Explains Why iPads Don't Just Run macOS

Friday June 13, 2025 7:46 am PDT by
iPadOS 26 allows iPads to function much more like Macs, with a new app windowing system, a swipe-down menu bar at the top of the screen, and more. However, Apple has stopped short of allowing iPads to run macOS, and it has now explained why. In an interview this week with Swiss tech journalist Rafael Zeier, Apple's software engineering chief Craig Federighi said that iPadOS 26's new Mac-like ...
Logitech Logo Feature

Logitech Announces Two New Accessories for WWDC

Friday June 13, 2025 7:22 am PDT by
Alongside WWDC this week, Logitech announced notable new accessories for the iPad and Apple Vision Pro. The Logitech Muse is a spatially-tracked stylus developed for use with the Apple Vision Pro. Introduced during the WWDC 2025 keynote address, Muse is intended to support the next generation of spatial computing workflows enabled by visionOS 26. The device incorporates six degrees of...
iphone 16 pro models 1

17 Reasons to Wait for the iPhone 17

Thursday June 12, 2025 8:58 am PDT by
Apple's iPhone development roadmap runs several years into the future and the company is continually working with suppliers on several successive iPhone models simultaneously, which is why we often get rumored features months ahead of launch. The iPhone 17 series is no different, and we already have a good idea of what to expect from Apple's 2025 smartphone lineup. If you skipped the iPhone...
iOS 26 Feature

Apple Seeds Revised iOS 26 Developer Beta to Fix Battery Issue

Friday June 13, 2025 10:15 am PDT by
Apple today provided developers with a revised version of the first iOS 26 beta for testing purposes. The update is only available for the iPhone 15 and iPhone 16 models, so if you're running iOS 26 on an iPhone 14 or earlier, you won't see the revised beta. Registered developers can download the new beta software through the Settings app on each device. The revised beta addresses an...
Mac Studio Feature

Apple Begins Selling Refurbished Mac Studio With M4 Max and M3 Ultra Chips at a Discount

Thursday June 12, 2025 10:14 am PDT by
Apple today added Mac Studio models with M4 Max and M3 Ultra chips to its online certified refurbished store in the United States, Canada, Japan, Singapore, and many European countries, for the first time since they were released in March. As usual for refurbished Macs, prices are discounted by approximately 15% compared to the equivalent new models on Apple's online store. Note that Apple's ...
m4 macbook air pink

Apple Now Selling Refurbished M4 MacBook Air Models

Friday June 13, 2025 3:34 pm PDT by
Apple today added M4 MacBook Air models to its refurbished store in the United States, making the latest MacBook Air devices available at a discounted price for the first time since they launched earlier this year. Both 13-inch and 15-inch MacBook Air models are available, with Apple offering multiple capacities and configurations. The refurbished devices are discounted by approximately 15...

Top Rated Comments

0815 Avatar
183 months ago
That raises another question though. Are developers consumers?
In this case yes: technically they are 'consuming' the licensed API.

Basically they are 'buying' a component (where Apple uses licensed parts) from Apple to build into their product. If the component at the root in a production chain is licensed, you can't charge everyone down the road in the production chain for the same thing over and over again (those are just using/consuming that component).
Score: 3 Votes (Like | Disagree)
paradox00 Avatar
183 months ago
The thing is, Apple isn't challenging the validity of the patents, they are arguing that developers are licensed for the patents. I don't see the issue right now.
Score: 3 Votes (Like | Disagree)
0815 Avatar
183 months ago
Apple not being allowed to challenge the patent ... that stinks. Didn't know that license agreements can have a stupid clause like that - that should be illegal and every company should always have the right to challenge a patent, no matter if they pay a license fee or not.

Could Apple 'pay' some other company to challenge? Are they allowed to support "Article One Partners"?

At least they are allowed to help their indie developers with the stupid law suit.

Good luck to every company challenging this patent troll - I hope this will be the end of Lodsys.

Lodsys shouldn't have tried to charge a license fee for a license that is already payed for (that is the outrage in my opinion) - as a result of this they turned now every major company against them trying to invalidate their patents leaving them hopefully with nothing (instead of a small something).

Even so mostly small indie developers were targeted (presumable 'easy' targets that can't defend themselves) it is fantastic to see how even big companies are now targeting Lodsys as enemy.
Score: 3 Votes (Like | Disagree)
BornAgainMac Avatar
183 months ago
Lodsys is getting sued by antivirus software maker now. Probably not enough to close them down.

http://news.cnet.com/8301-1023_3-20070941-93/lodsys-sued-by-antivirus-software-maker/
Score: 2 Votes (Like | Disagree)
gnasher729 Avatar
183 months ago
Guys, FOSS patents = Florian Müller = paid Microsoft mouthpiece.

See for example http://iptarget.blogspot.com/2011/06/leverage-if-you-are-threatened-with.html . Title "Leverage If You Are Threatened with Patent Infringement (and why you should ignore FOSSpatents)" At the end of the article: "On a personal note, Florian accused me of being an "anonymous smearer". While I am doing this anonymously, my response still stands: "FYI rebutting factually inaccurate statements does not make me a "smearer", it makes you uninformed"."

There is something that irritates me, to see how giant companies (in this case, Apple) will always have advantage over subjects like these which are, in essence, proving the other side wrong. Apple has a lot of fanboys, and as evidenced by one of the first posts in this thread, people see Lodsys as the 'bad guy' when they are simply fighting for what they think is theirs.
You should probably inform yourself about Lodsys and its patents. See for example http://www.applepatent.com/2011/06/lodsys-hints-from-file-history.html which shows prior art to Lodsys' patent.
Score: 2 Votes (Like | Disagree)
NebulaClash Avatar
183 months ago
This is a distortion of the purpose of patents. We're not talking about poor Lodsys inventing something and then striving to compete with the big, bad corporations who are stealing their intellectual property. They are merely a tiny holding company that owns four patents they bought from Intellectual Ventures (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Intellectual_Ventures), that company founded by Microsoft employees whose business model is to collect as many patents and intellectual property they can get and make money from it all.

Now Lodsys got ahold of these patents and is trying the old Slashdot humor on the world:

1. Buy patents
2. ?????
3. PROFIT!

Of course in this case their "?????" step is to sue the little developer, get them to pay up instead of taking it to court, use that precedent to go after bigger prey, etc. It's simply a business that has nothing to do with protecting ideas and everything to do with getting rich off someone else's ideas.
Score: 2 Votes (Like | Disagree)