
Kootol, an India based company, has started sending out legal notices to a number of developers including IconFactory, the makers of Twitteriffic.
The legal notices sent out claim the companies are infringeing on a US patent for Twitter style realtime feeds. It seems the entire iOS Twittaverse should be receiving legal notices soon. I'm surprised no patent trolls have tried to send legal notices to companies over patents for "displaying numbers and letters in such a way that they can be read and understood."
How vague can these patents be? Between Apple trying to kill every other smartphone OS, and ridiculous patents over Twitter feeds, what other vague barely describable ideas are left to patent?
Luckily for international developers the patent only applies to those companies residing in the U.S. International developers like Simon Maddox have already started pulling their Apps from American app stores, in both the Android and iOS markets. Shaun Austin another U.K. developer even went as far as to tweet "selling software in the US has already reached the non-viable tipping point."
Turns out by the time I finished writing this article Kootol already filed for the same patent in Europe, Canada, and India. Patent trolls will slowly suck the life out of the development community. If this isn't proof the U.S. and world wide patent system needs to be updated to accommodate the digital world, I don't know what is.
Source: iPhoneHacks
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