Apple has been sued 92 times in 3 years by patent trolls, making it the
most targeted company, according to a statement filed with the FTC.
The
remarks are in response to the Commission's request for public comments
concerning its proposed collection of information pertaining to Patent
Assertion Entities ("PAEs").
No firm has been targeted by
PAEs more than Apple. Apple has litigated against PAEs 92 times in the
past three years alone, and has received many more demands. Its
experience confirms what many others have documented: although PAE
activity is not necessarily harmful in theory, far too many PAEs exist
only to extract undeserved royalties. As both a market leader and the
PAEs' favorite target, Apple has a special interest in policies that
discourage this behavior. Apple thanks the Commission for undertaking
this important study, and respectfully submits these comments on the
Commission's proposal.
Notably, Apple appears most upset with Lodsys which has used the tactic of going after Apple developers, many of whom don't have the financial resources to fight back.
One
would be hard pressed to imagine a more troubling instantiation of this
model than the one practiced by Lodsys Group, LLC... Lodsys burst onto
the patent assertion scene in 2011 by firing off a spate of demand
letters to app developers, many of whom are individuals with extremely
little revenue, alleging that they were using software related to
“in-app purchasing” that was covered by a handful of Lodsys-owned
patents...
[A]gain, Lodsys scuttled away, settling with each of
the developers for a pittance, thereby mooting Apple’s attempted
intervention and avoiding a sure loss on the merits... Lodsys has no
compunctions about this strategy. It will keep moving from developer to
developer, leeching whatever royalties it can until a party with the
resources to litigate scares it away.
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