UK Developers Quit US App Store Over Patent Fears 192
iamflimflam1 writes "The Guardian is running a story on how app developers in the UK are withdrawing from the U.S. app store over patent fears. 'The growth of patent lawsuits over apps raises serious issues for all the emerging smartphone platforms, because none of the principal companies involved — Apple, Google or Microsoft — can guarantee to protect developers from them. Even when the mobile OS developer has signed a patent licence — as Apple has with at least one company currently pursuing patent lawsuits — it is not clear that it has any legal standing to defend developers.' This follows a blog post from the iconfactory about the death of independent developers. Have the big corporations really won? What is the future for small teams and one-man-band developers?"
This tweet (FTFA) shows how screwed up it is. (Score:2, Informative)
Re:It has to get worse before it gets better (Score:4, Informative)
>It really needs to get really bad before people start realizing how patents are hurting economy and innovation, to a point where there vote on such matters count.
This statement is a little too general. Patents aren't necessarily the problem, what is more problematic is that they're being abused.
Patents were supposed to protect small businesses and startups with a new idea. Now they're being used for extortion (a la Microsoft forcing Samsung, HTC, etc. to pay for a WP7 license on every phone they sell) and manipulation (see here [dailytech.com]). And it's much easier for large corporations to acquire them becuase they can pay for the application fees or patent auctions.
What's obviously clear here is that patents aren't serving their original intention. What the US needs is legislation to stop patent abuse, particularly by large corporations. But there are too many lawyers in America, so it will never happen.