loopinsight.com
Edit: Full Letter: http://www.macworld.com/article/160031/2011/05/apple_legal_lodsys_letter_text.html
If this is legit software it is marketed by someone who doesn't mind that their ad looks and smells exactly like a trojan.
[EDIT: Or, as suggested below, someone has exploited a JS vulnerability.]
EDIT: Modding up the "Macworld" link below.
[MORE EDIT: Removed suggestion that this thing might be malware; I'm choosing to trust the research of my fellow HN reader, below, who claims it is legit. Thanks for taking the time.]
1. http://www.macworld.com/article/152184/2010/07/cleanmymac1.h...
2. http://macpaw.com/cleanmymac
What should a developer do when they find themselves in a situation where their software might be confused with malware? This app isn’t even all that similar to the malware. The name is completely different, the purpose is completely different (compared to the bogus stated purpose of the malware) – the connection is tenuous at best.
The bad thing is that no app is safe from that. Malware authors can pretend to be anything. Is the correct response to that really to shut down business or whatever you want them do? Should all developers of maintenance or anti-virus software for the Mac really close up shop?
But presumably these ads work, and maybe they work so well that it's worth the collateral damage to one's brand from people whose first reaction is like mine. Hey, it's your life.
The other defense is to build the brand. Get some reviews from someone I've heard of. Name-check those reviews in the ad, maybe even with a link. Buy other ads in other places, where I might see them as I surf. Change the call-to-action buttons to read a little more like "learn more" and a little less like "install this thing now". Heck, I don't know.
And, yes, it's true, the existence of well-known trojans masquerading as "security" software is unfair to legitimate system-utility vendors, just as the existence of spam is unfair to legitimate friendly emailers and the existence of the flu is unfair to people who like to shake hands. What am I supposed to do about that? Encourage people to sneeze on me in the spirit of brotherly love?
If I'm selling software that scans for and removes spyware, popups would be a pretty damned compelling marketing channel as people without the savvy to install a popup blocker can probably derive a lot of value from my product.
As above, in the notice letters we have seen, Lodsys uses screenshots that expressly identify the App Store as the entity that purportedly collects and manages the results of these user interactions at a central location.
Thus, the technology that is targeted in your notice letters is technology that Apple is expressly licensed under the Lodsys patents to offer to Apple’s App Makers. These licensed products and services enable Apple’s App Makers to communicate with end users through the use of Apple’s own licensed hardware, software, APIs, memory, servers, and interfaces, including Apple’s App Store. Because Apple is licensed under Lodsys’ patents to offer such technology to its App Makers, the App Makers are entitled to use this technology free from any infringement claims by Lodsys.
This is an interesting side-effect of Apple's end-to-end control of the iOS environment. This defense may not have worked for Android as you could argue that some of the equipment (non-google-produced handsets) does not fall under the licensing umbrella of the company (Apple in this case).
The response should be interesting.
edited for clarity
EDIT: As pointed out by bcrescimanno, I may have misunderstood who shot themselves in the foot. :)
Edit. Beat me...
Although maybe that is whats holding up in-app payments for Android?
Awesome.
Everyone I know who is doing real work in tech agrees that patents like this are BS. But everyone keeps playing the broken game. No one yet has had the incentive to make a real push (like lobbying) for real patent reform. It's still cheaper to swat the flies than it is to, I dunno, hire an exterminator? (I've never been good at analogies)
It's clear why Apple is doing it - it raises the bar for other App Stores. But it sucks that we're in this position at all.
There's a catch-22 in this situation. Only large companies have the lobbying muscle to effect change. Apple, Microsoft, Google, and other players clearly risk more than they gain from the current patent system, but if they speak out against it, the trolls will organize a PR campaign smearing "huge, faceless corporations" for "picking on the little guy that drives American innovation."
Meanwhile, the little guys have essentially no voice at all in government, so their actual opinion doesn't matter.
Worse, the entire US government is basically composed of lawyers, members of a tribe that benefits from the status quo.
Really in this scenario the trolls are almost the good guys, as long as they are attacking the big players like Microsoft. If we get enough cases like i4i v. MS, the big companies will decide that the current patent system is too dangerous even considering their large patent portfolios that they use to reciprocally gouge their contemporaries and competitors out of money.
Right now MS et al are not too worried about patents because any competitor who brings a suit on a patent claim can be counter-sued by one of MS's patents; if someone comes demanding that MS buy a license, MS can reciprocate and demand that that party license a patent it holds. These kinds of cross-licensing agreements and reciprocal lawsuits go on behind the scenes all the day long at the big tech players.
If we get more patent trolls who only hold patents and don't put out a real product for the big guys to counter-target with their own portfolio of tech patents, then we'll be in a situation where even an extensive portfolio can't protect the big players any more and they'll have to advocate for reform. We just have to make it cost more than their profit from cross-licensing, etc.
Just another handful of injunctions similar to the one from i4i case, which ordered MS to stop selling Office, and we'll be looking good.
Now that they are clearly a patent troll, and a scary one at that, it looks like the conditions you set out for reform are that much closer to coming to being. I wonder if Myhrvold will end up acting in the interest of the tech industry after all...
How exactly would the latter proposed response actually help?
The proposed response would be a small step towards delegitimizing it in people's minds. People love Apple products; if they heard from Apple that this patent part of a deeply broken system, that would be one step on the way towards actually getting it changed.
It may disappoint you, but no company in their right mind is going to take that gamble.
(IANAL but one of my good friends is a self-confessed patent troll -- in this market, you take what you can get. He explained the whole racket to me over beers one night.)
That's exactly my point about how it's currently still cheaper to swat the flies. But they could at least publicly argue for patent reform, and heap scorn on patent trolls, which shouldn't be as expensive.
> IANAL but one of my good friends is a self-confessed patent troll -- in this market, you take what you can get.
If you're really struggling to make ends meet, I can understand resorting to behavior even if you don't agree with it 100%. I'm sure I would steal bread if it were my only alternative to going hungry. But in the bigger picture such people/companies are leeches on the economy and should have their legal weapons (patents) taken away from them.
They aren't going to withdraw their suits just because apple threatens them.
As it stands now, if there is to be a suit between Apple and Lodsys, it will require Apple to act as plaintiff on behalf of its developers and that could potentially open up a huge can of worms for Apple because it could establish a higher level obligations and responsibilities between Apple and its developers. The fact that Apple responded via public letter rather than lawsuit is indicative of approaching this as a PR issue rather than a serious licensing issue - i.e. if it was clear that Apple's agreement with Lodsys allowed them to sub-license the technology to third parties they would have sought an injunction rather than issuing what boils down to essentially a press release.
A la the RIAA shakedown business model a patent troll tried to extort a bunch of independent developers that had no chance of fighting back. Then Apple (with their well-documented $60 billion of fuck-you money) stepped in and said we've already paid you your protection fee-it transfers to our developers, now please go away before this gets ugly.
I think this is pretty great. (Other than the fact that the current software patent system encourages this sort of thing, natch)
---
2.5 Ownership Apple retains all rights, title, and interest in and to the Apple Software and any Updates it may make available to You under this Agreement. You agree to cooperate with Apple to maintain Apple's ownership of the Apple Software, and, to the extent that You become aware of any claims relating to the Apple Software, You agree to use reasonable efforts to promptly provide notice of any such claims to Apple. The parties acknowledge that this Agreement does not give Apple any ownership interest in Your Applications
---
IANAL, but they seem to have followed Apple's instructions and are, seemingly, in the clear with this response.
If I were a developer sitting in the hot seat, I'd feel inclined to delay as long as possible, forcing Lodsys to fight an expensive legal battle with a much larger opponent. Ducking service, while often unfavorable in the court's view, would be a virtually free method of prolonging Lodsys' engagement with indie developers, and would cost them only inconvenience.
If Apple does, in fact, gain an injunction, it almost doesn't matter what Lodsys does, as Apple can drag their case out until it's not feasible for Lodsys to fight any longer, or by winning/settling.
I'll add that because appears to be a formal agreement between Apple and Lodsys, the suits against individual developers look more like a new twist in an ongoing dispute than the pure patent trolling which the tech press has tended to use to describe the story (i.e. this seems more like an escalation of an issue of which Apple was aware than an attack from out of nowhere).
Apple: [http://www.macworld.com/article/160031/2011/05/apple_legal_l...]
LodSys: [http://www.lodsys.com/1/post/2011/05/q-i-developed-on-apple-...]