No, Google, not me, was trumpeting that figure. Google made a publicly-accessible court filing that claimed Oracle demanded up to $6.1 billion. In that particular legal context, Google would not have had to state the number at all (it could have merely referenced it), or it could have redacted it for the general public, but it wanted to put it out.
I wasn't even first to pick it up: Reuters reported on it before I did.
My reporting was nonjudgmental. I just informed everyone of what Google's filing said.
The best course of action now depends largely on the success of Apple's motion for an intervention. If that motion is granted, which is reasonably likely (though never certain), it will be time for Apple to clarify what support and coverage it gives to the sued app developers.
I know from at least one of them that he is NOT covered by Apple. If that continues to be the situation, the advice may unfortunately have to be at some point to sign Lodsys's license agreement if that results in dismissal from the lawsuit or helps avoid one.
For Android developers, the question is what Google will do. So far they say nothing and do nothing. If Apple's motion is granted, the question must be asked why Google doesn't intervene. One of the accused apps is an Android app ("Labyrinth for Android"). If Google doesn't protect Android app developers, they will also have to consider very seriously a license deal with Lodsys.
I have seen Lodsys's license agreement. I would recommend that many app developers share the cost of having it reviewed by a lawyer (rather than get into Patrick Igoe's claim chart stuff, which is neither convincing nor useful to those who can't afford a multi-million-dollar lawsuit over that question). If a lawyer agrees that the license agreement is reasonable, which in my personal opinion it is, then that's definitely better than going to court.
Patrick Igoe also came up with a "divided infringement" theory, which I rebutted on my blog. Apple apparently doesn't believe in his theory either, so why should you?
The likelihood of any one developer being contacted by "174 entitiesl ike Lodsys" is extremely low -- the same developer is more likely to be struck by lightning.
I have repeatedly pointed out, especially on my blog, the problem of encouraging other trolls to go after app developers. But in the example, $100 is a much better deal than paying thousands of dollars to lawyers. The thing that should happen is for Apple and Google to take care of their app developers.
My advice is not to simply pay the license fees, but if (1) Apple and Google don't help their app developers (Apple appears to be willing to help but the extent of it isn't clear yet; Google has neither said nor done anything so far) and (2) the licensee fees are in a given case much less than the cost of even a cursory legal analysis, then they're an economically more intelligent choice unless the license agreement contains anything that poses a risk comparable to the one of being sued without a license agreement.
What else would you expect a lawyer to recommend than something that makes lawyers money?
Should app developers with, for an example, revenues of $5,000 to $10,000 a year pay a patent attorney their entire annual income from their app for just a cursory (!) look at the issue (far from the cost of searching for prior art etc., which is way higher)? How practical is that?
Why doesn't the article talk about the cost of such legal defense and the risk of an East Texas jury handing a multi-million dollar damage award to Lodsys?
Why doesn't he compare the low cost of Lodsys's license for the average app developer to the cost of legal advice (let alone legal defense or damages ordered by a court)?
How can app developers without the resources in place to defend themselves ever even get to the point where they can seriously challenge Lodsys's claim chart?
How can one be not profoundly concerned when Lodsys sends a letter, given that Lodsys has already sued 27 entities and is embroiled in seven lawsuits in three different states?
And why does a self-proclaimed open source site like Groklaw promote a patent attorney who vigorously argues in favor of software patents on Twitter?
By the way, the same Patrick Igoe doubted in an email to me a few months ago that Nokia was in a position to turn Apple into the net payer. I predicted it in March, I reaffirmed that prediction in May, and I was proven right yesterday.
The new stories that surfaced today sounded similar, but James Thomson told me on Twitter that it's about a different company and patent this time around.
The article talks a lot about Groklaw's decline and accurately concludes does Groklaw must end now because otherwise it will slide into complete irrelevance. I concur. It has become an echo chamber for a small group of people, some of whom had a sectarian attitude.
Your first paragraph is, once again, a complete strawman as opposed to what I said or implied. Not granting a license to a patent on FRAND terms is certainly anticompetitive, but not necessarily illegal. If, however, a monopolist does so in order to foreclose competition, then it raises serious antitrust issues and can, as the result of a regulatory process or lawsuit, be deemed illegal.
Your second paragraph doesn't make sense to me given that the patents asserted by IBM in that correspondence were related to the Hercules open source emulator, not specific to any commercial offering. The maintainer of the Hercules project explained on his blog why this was an attack on the Hercules project as a whole:
http://ibmvshercules.com/
You're now trying, not for the first time in this discussion, quite desperately to pretend not to understand what I say.
You previously just phrased my 3rd option differently to artifically create a 4th option.
Now you don't take into account that I explained 3 different approaches: grant a free license, grant a FRAND license, and prohibit any implementation of the patented invention only to foreclose competition, which is exactly what IBM (a monopolist in the context we're discussing) tried. Fortunately, the European Commission is investigating IBM for suspected violations of EU competition law.
On LWN, a user pointed out that text analysis tools show that some Groklaw articles were definitely written by male authors and others definitely by female authors:
http://lwn.net/Articles/437741/
This is yet another clear indication that "PJ" was just an avatar.
Your point 4 is just a different way to phrase my point 3, the worst option of all.
Similarly, your distinction between a "community open-source project" and someone bundling it with hardware makes no sense. Companies bundling open source software with hardware or commercializing it in other ways are simply part of the community as long as they comply with open source terms.
It can be read by the general public, but a tweet beginning with @ is shown only to the addressed person and to those who jointly follow the sender and the addressed person. So that's quite different from something that all followers see in their stream automatically.
There can be different objectives of informing someone of potential infringement:
1) making someone aware but saying right away that it's fine (that's what IBM as a self-declared friend and protector of open source should have done in this context)
2) making someone aware and offering a license deal on fair, reasonable and non-discriminatory (FRAND) terms; that would have made sense in this case, too, since TurboHercules stated in its first letter that it wanted to reach an agreement with IBM on such terms
3) making someone aware while simultaneously pursuing exclusionary, anticompetitive objectives
I like the first possibility, I can accept the second one if the offered terms are truly FRAND, but I despise the third option.
Contrary to my statement being "an interesting spin", your statement displays a total lack of understanding for antitrust law and patent law.
Worse than that, you don't even seem to understand that antitrust regulators aren't courts of law.
If you sue someone over patent infringement allegations, and as long as you satisfy some basic criteria (such as "Rule 11"), there will be a lawsuit. It's a given that the court will hear your case. Period. And it's only because you as the patent holder want to assert your rights, regardless of whether that particular case is good or bad for the economy at large, and for society.
By contrast, an antitrust complaint like the one TurboHercules brought against IBM (many months after the initial - even if then not yet totally specific - patent infringement threat) is lodged with a regulatory agency that doesn't have an obligation to follow up. They can always say there's no public interest in what you complain about. In that case, you could try to bring an antitrust lawsuit, and then you just satisfy some basic criteria and a court will hear the case. But if you ask an antitrust regulator to act, the regulatory agency will look at your complaint and its merits, and will compare it to other complaints and their merits, and will then decide to pursue only the most important issues, i.e., the ones that the economy at large, and society, have the greatest benefit from.
Depending on the jurisdiction, the antitrust regulator will either have to go to court at some point (unless a case is settled before) or, such as in the EU's case, the regulator may be in a position to impose remedies and fines, but all of that will be subject to review by a court of law if the affected company appeals.
TurboHercules didn't make a "request" to IBM as a "bluff". Instead, IBM threatened TurboHercules with a previous letter.
Also, TurboHercules never attacked IBM with patents (I guess TurboHercules doesn't even own any patents). All that TurboHercules did later was to lodge an antitrust complaint with the European Commission. However, lodging a complaint with a regulator is not an act of aggression. Regulatory agencies will only take action if a company's conduct is suspected of being anticompetitive and unlawful. The European Commission launched an investigation in July:
http://fosspatents.blogspot.com/2010/07/european-commission-...
That would not have happened if there weren't serious concerns over what IBM is doing. The outcome of the in-depth investigation remains to be seen, but the European Commission doesn't launch such investigations unless there's at least a strong indication of possible wrongdoing.
I wasn't even first to pick it up: Reuters reported on it before I did.
My reporting was nonjudgmental. I just informed everyone of what Google's filing said.