App developers withdraw from US as patent fears reach 'tipping point'

Growth in US software patent lawsuits means independent developers are turning away from it as a place to do business - as Indian software company sends warning to tech giants (updated)

App developers are withdrawing their products for sale from the US versions of Apple's App Store and Google's Android Market for fear of being sued by companies which own software patents - just as a Mumbai-based company has made a wide-ranging claim against Microsoft, Apple, Google, Yahoo and a number of other companies over Twitter-style feeds, for which it claims it has applied for a patent.

Software patent owners in the US have latched onto potential revenue streams to be earned from independent developers by suing over perceived infringements of their intellectual property - which can be expensive for developers to defend even if they are successful.

Now developers in Europe are retreating from the US to avoid the expense and concern such "patent trolls" are causing.

Simon Maddox, a UK developer, has removed all his apps from US app stores on both iOS and Android for fear of being sued by Lodsys, a company which has already sued a number of iOS and Android developers which it says infringe its software patent.

Shaun Austin, another app developer based in Cheltenham, said that "selling software in the US has already reached the non-viable tipping point".

And Fraser Speirs, a Scottish developer who has written apps for the Mac and iOS, remarked that he was "starting to get seriously concerned about my future as a software developer due to these patent issues".

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.

That has led developers to take evasive action. On Wednesday Maddoxtweeted that he was removing his apps from US app stores and putting 0.575% of total revenue into a spare bank account. "Screw you, Lodsys", he commented.

He told the Guardian that it's "far too dangerous to do business" in the US because of the risk of software patent lawsuits.

But for US-based developers, the problems remain. Craig Hockenberry of Iconfactory, developer of Twitterrific, remarked that "Just when you think things couldn't get any worse, they do and tweeted that "I became an independent developer to control my own destiny. I no longer do". Iconfactory is among those being targeted by Lodsys, but earlier this week was granted a 30-day extension to reply to Lodsys's claim.

Meawhile Kootol Software of Mumbai announced that it has sent a notice to Microsoft, Apple, Yahoo, Google, IBM, Research in Motion, LinkedIn, MySpace, Research in Motion and a number of other companies - including Iconfactory - claiming that they infringe US patent application 11/995,343 - "A Method and System for Communication, Advertising, Searching, Sharing and Dynamically Providing a Journal Feed" - which it said has also been applied for in India, Canada and Europe.

It says that patent it is seeking is an invention which "allows the user to publish and send messages using one way or two way messaging and by subscribing to posts of other users of a network. By indexing each message of each user the system provides real time search capabilities to users of the network in turn creating a unique form of communication."

The company claims that it covers core messaging, publication and real-time searching, and that the named companies "may violate [our] intellectual property by using it for their website, networks, applications, services, platforms, operating systems and devices."

Because the patent has not apparently been granted by the US Patent Office or any other patent office, the warning message may give the companies involved the chance to contact the relevant examiners and have the claim invalidated because "prior art" - implementations which predate the application - already exist, notes Florian Mueller, who has followed the development of the field.

Thank you : http://www.guardian.co.uk/technology/appsblog/2011/jul/15/app-developers-withdraw-us-patents

As Deal With Twitter Expires, Google Realtime Search Goes Offline

Yesterday, we reported that Google Realtime Search had mysteriously disappeared. Today comes the reason why: Google’s agreement with Twitter to carry its results has expired, taking with it much of the content that was in the service with it.

Google sent us this explanation:

Since October of 2009, we have had an agreement with Twitter to include their updates in our search results through a special feed, and that agreement expired on July 2.

While we will not have access to this special feed from Twitter, information on Twitter that’s publicly available to our crawlers will still be searchable and discoverable on Google.

Google also stressed that went Google Realtime Search relaunches — something it says will happen but with no set time frame — it will include content from a variety of sources and not just be solely devoted to Google+ material. The company said:

Our vision is to have google.com/realtime include Google+ information along with other realtime data from a variety of sources.

Google Realtime Search had carried content from a variety of services beyond Twitter, including Facebook fan page updates. When we last wrote about the service in April, when it added Quora and Gowalla content, this was the full source list:

Twitter tweets

Google News links

Google Blog Search links

Newly created web pages

Freshly updated web pages

FriendFeed updates

Jaiku updates

Identi.ca updates

TwitArmy updates

Google Buzz posts

MySpace updates

Facebook fan page updates

Quora

Gowolla

Plixi

Me2day

Twitgoo

Still, as said, Twitter was the by far the most dominant content within the service. It’s unclear why the agreement was allowed to expire. Twitter sent me this:

Since October 2009, Twitter has provided Google with the stream of public tweets for incorporation into their real-time search product and other uses. That agreement has now expired. We continue to provide this type of access to Microsoft, Yahoo!, NTT Docomo, Yahoo! Japan and dozens of other smaller developers. And, we work with Google in many other ways.

For its part, Google said:

Twitter has been a valuable partner for nearly two years, and we remain open to exploring other collaborations in the future.

I’d say we have a bit of a standoff.

One reason I’d expect Twitter would do a deal with Google sometime soon is that otherwise, people largely have no way to locate tweets that are older than a few days.

Twitter has largely outsourced the service of Twitter search longer than a few days to Google, a deliberate decision so that Twitter could focus on other search features, such as its new Top Tweets feature, as covered more below:

Move Over Time Sorting: Twitter Gets “Top Tweets” Search Results

The end of Google Realtime Search means that tiny search engine Topsy remains in the enviable situation of having the only major Twitter archive available on the web, to my knowledge. The stories below cover more about this:

Where Have All The Old Tweets Gone?

All The Old Tweets Are Found: Google Launches Twitter Archive Search

Topsy: Now Searching Tweets Back To May 2008

Bing Social Search, which is a confusing name for what’s really Bing’s realtime search service, also has a deal with Twitter. Indeed, both the Twitter deals with Google and Microsoft were announced on the same day.

Twitter’s deal appears to be continuing with Bing. I still see search results showing up over there that include Twitter. But Bing’s service never went as far back in time as Google’s.

While Twitter may need Google to continue offering archive search, Google also potentially needs Twitter in another way. Google may have lost some of the data it has recently been using to bring social signals into its results, as covered more below:

Google’s Search Results Get More Social; Twitter As The New Facebook “Like”

I’ve not yet been able to check on whether Google Social Search and other parts of Google have been impacted by the deal’s end. I’ll look at that later — I’m heading off to enjoy the 4th Of July myself now.

Update: Google has sent us a statement addressing the issue above:

While we will not have access to this special feed from Twitter, information on Twitter that’s publicly available to our crawlers will still be searchable and discoverable on Google.

As for other features such as social search, they will continue to exist, though without Twitter data from the special feed.

You can certainly understand why Google+ has become even more important to the service now. While Google has gotten by largely without social signals from Facebook, having its own data from Google+ gives it insulation if it now has to get by without Twitter signals, as well.