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."

Screw it.. I'm moving to NZ

[anchovy_chekov]

Seriously, if were considering setting up a new business model and didn't want to be dragged down by the hordes of patent-trolling parasites out there, NZ is starting to look good. Plus at 5 foot 10 inches I'm bound to be bigger than most of the Hobbits.

Re:Perhaps he'll develop an innovative app instead

[JaredOfEuropa]

Besides the fact that it's useful to repackage this function as an app (you can check the arrival time from home / the bar / your office and wait for the bus there instead of at the stop), the guy hardly deserves to be sued into the ground for not being innovative enough, in what looks like to be a case without merit. And that's the crux of the issue: you can sue anyone for patent infringement, and even if your case has mo merit whatsoever, you can still extort the defendant over legal fees. Pay the $500, pcik your target, any target, and offer to settle for half of what the defendant would pay in legal fees. Profit!

What if the guy actually comes up with a truly innovative app instead? You can be sure that the same patent trolls will be all over him as soon as he makes a buck.