Lodsys Launches Patent-Infringement Suit against Brother, Canon, HP, Lexmark, Samsung, and Others

February 16, 2011 | Filed under: Courthouse Briefings | Posted by: AI staff

A Marshall, TX-based company that owns and licenses some patents hopes to drag various printer OEMs and technology firms to court

On February 11, Lodsys LLC, a Marshall, TX-based company, filed a patent-infringement lawsuit in the United States District Court for the Eastern District of Texas. The complaint names as defendants some big names from the printer and information technology (IT) industries, including Brother International, Canon U.S.A., Hewlett-Packard (HP), Hulu, Lenovo, Lexmark International, Motorola Mobility, Novell, Samsung Electronics, and Trend Micro. Some of the products that Lodsys claims infringe its intellectual property include printers and MFPs that use software that shares with the vendor information about supplies usage and/or helps users order supplies online. Some of the allegedly infringing MFPs use software that helps users to easily access various MFP functions or so-called Universal Print Drivers.

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Tags: Brother, Canon, HP, Lexmark, Lodsys, Lodsys v. Brother et al. (2011), Samsung

9 Responses to Lodsys Launches Patent-Infringement Suit against Brother, Canon, HP, Lexmark, Samsung, and Others

Seems to me that companies are pushing harder than before to compete with competitors without doing the actual work of inventing new things rather just building on the work of others or “patent infringement” more info on the subject. http://businesses.generalpatent.com/patent-infringement

Jared - February 21, 2011
5:29 pm
- I’m sorry but patents like these are complete crap! “Methods and Systems for Gathering Information from Units of a Commodity Across a Network” filed in 1999. So two machines talking to each other with one gathering information from the other over the internet is patented? Give me a break!
  
  Dave - May 10, 2011
  5:47 pm
  - You are absolutely correct. These patents are so vague, they should have never been issued. But what else would you expect when you have government morons regulating and issuing patents on technology items.
    
    Derek - May 16, 2011
    5:24 pm
  - Dave, don’t be sorry because your are absolutely right. Patents like these are abusive and ridiculous, I read all lodsys patents online. they are so broad it is insane. any company making a network appliance would be in violation, I’m willing to bet whom ever approved it just got tired of reading and just ok’ed it. The spirit of patents is suppose to be for formula’s, algorithms and new discovery’s that are quantifiable. most software and plenty hardware is replicable without reverse engineering. It’s just plain embarrassing they law hasn’t caught up and it is detrimental to innovation.
    
    jonny - June 24, 2011
    2:11 pm
I just have to say this is imoral who just trolls on people trying to make a living. Same company trolling on small time indie developers. This guy needs to get a job.

OMG - May 14, 2011
1:54 am
Yea…we got a claim letter from this company for a live chat service we use. It makes no sense. An absurdity, but some people are apparently paying this company for licensing otherwise they wouldn’t be trying this type of crap.

Kevin - May 18, 2011
12:10 am
i think big companies like apple,google, microsoft, etc. should grouped together – pull all their patent assets and give the troll the same medicine – that including auditing all their software, etc.

they all will have appstore or similar in future and wouldnt want their dev. scared from selling apps. in these case a common enemy. might as well, for the better good of the mobile ecosystem. otherwise, if another troll comes along and demand another royalty percentage, how much is left for the devs?

jumbo - May 24, 2011
2:15 pm
This patent was granted in 1999? As described, it sure sounds like the client/server systems I was using in the ’80s. The only difference is the ‘commodities’ I was requesting were data retrievals.

Can anybody say “prior art?”

Nick - June 1, 2011
11:48 pm
I wrote my first online survey system in 1994.
There is plenty of prior art, but why should anyone even have to dig for it.
We should just bury these a–holes instead.
After they repay everyone they have sued and stole from

Werty - August 30, 2011
10:00 pm