How Patent Trolls Stalled a New Transit App

SFGate has the story of Aaron Bannert, creator of a San Francisco transit app called Smart Ride. The app was developed to provide arrival times for the city's bus system. Smart Ride was supported by ads, and Bannert had not yet turned a profit on it when he received a legal threat from a company claiming patent infringement. "It was from a company with ties to Martin Kelly Jones, who holds a series of patents claiming ownership of technologies for tracking vehicles and providing users with electronic updates. A handful of affiliated companies, including ArrivalStar and Melvino Technologies, have threatened or sued hundreds of organizations in recent years, from small entrepreneurs like Bannert to large corporations like American Airlines. ... ArrivalStar filed more than half the patent lawsuits in South Florida federal courts last year, according to the South Florida Business Journal. ... ArrivalStar will demand as much as $200,000 for a license, according to reports in other publications." The cost to the patent troll for filing a lawsuit is around $500, but Bannert was forced to spend over $10,000 on a legal defense and delay the launch of a new version for months. He's unable to provide details on the outcome of the case. "As high as the legal expenses were for Bannert, he thinks the bigger toll from patent trolling is the indirect cost to society, the products and innovation that don't make it off the drawing board."

Re:Profit

[sandertje]

If you want to market or profit from your app, you most probably need some kind of company registration. Hence, you are trackable - at least your company is.

x264 and libavcodec

[amaurea]

Mplayer, libavcodec and x264 are examples of successfull patent-violating software products that have laster for a long while, and not been killed off by patent lawsuits. So it is clearly possible. The key is probably to be distributed, open source and not predominantly based in the USA.

Re:Profit

[TheRaven64]

If you're not intending to make any profit from it, then you can set up a company that has no assets to distribute the app. This will cost you a small amount, but it means that the patent troll can take the company to court if they want, but it will cost them money and the company will just declare bankruptcy without attending court and they won't be able to recoup their legal fees.

Re:Perhaps he'll develop an innovative app instead

[abannert]

Smart Ride is actually a lot more than that. It takes advantage of the phone's capabilities to show nearby stops, maps, alerts, and other realtime info. I love those LED displays and use them all the time, but they aren't available at every stop. And we happen to support 45 or so transit agencies these days, all within one app.

We aren't trying to innovate in the vehicle tracking area. We are innovating around data aggregation (we have a huge and growing database of transit data, most of which is realtime) and around clever ways to present that data to our users. Smart Ride is one of those apps where it has to be on 24/7, be very fast, and very simple (so my mom can understand it). The whole point is to make transit easy for everyone.

But as another poster pointed out, the merits of my entrepreneurial pursuits (or lack thereof, your mind) shouldn't justify me being sued for patent infringement.

PS, that app you linked to is *not* an official SF MTA app. It is another 3rd party developer like me, who apparently is benefitting from the name confusion. As far as I know, SF MTA doesn't have an official app of their own.

Re:wiki that documents all troll-victims?

[abannert]

The EFF just recently put up a site exactly for this purpose: https://trollingeffects.org/ [trollingeffects.org]