[Scotsman]

I don't know if everybody has heard about this one or not, but there's a patent troll out there named lodsys suing iPhone developers, Android developers, and anybody else they think they can for some dubious patents they hold.

In the case of iPhone and Android developers, they are suing for use of the built in API's for in app purchases provided by Apple and Google respectively. Even though Apple and Google already took out licenses to these patents under terms they thought would cover app developers.

So why should you personally care? Why should you care what happens to a bunch of app developers? Because this is just the tip of the iceberg. This is why the patent system is so seriously broken. This is how the patent system stifles innovation. You spend many many hours developing something, figuring out the solutions to problems with no help from anyone, let alone some obtuse legalistic patent that's useless anyway, just to be blind sided by some troll saying you used their invention pay up.

Further, for those using Manor, before this gem came up, I was seriously looking at doing a version of Manor for Android tablets (Apple dev license precludes doing one for iPad). Now, I don't know. I'm sorry, but it's not worth potentially loosing my house, savings, and everything else to write an app.

As I'm sure I'm not the only developer in the world that see's it that way, ask yourself, how many other apps aren't happening because of this crap? How many other potential job creating startups aren't happening because of these trolls?

So think about all that, talk to your friends about it. Look at how many people are out of work and ask yourself is it really worth keeping potential job generating idea's down so some lawyers can get rich?

The big point is a LOT more noise needs to happen about this outside the tech world before anything meaningful will happen to fix it. And just as a kicker, think back to around 2000 when tech was going gangbusters before a certain shrub started shooting his mouth off and scared the money people. Were you or your neighbor unemployed then with little prospect of finding work?

Software patents weren't that big an issue in the mid to late 90's, you never heard of people suing over software patents or patent trolls. Which is one of the big factors that allowed tech to take off to begin with. Now the damned trolls sure as heck are throwing water on tech taking off again. Which is throwing a huge wet blanket on a large contributor to a possible economic turn around.