An American Texas firm that goes by the name of Lodsys, is suing Rovio. The reason for this is due to Rovio "violating Lodsys patents". Rovio creates a way for players to purchase additional content for Angry Birds, to be playable inside the actual game. The Telegraph shares that this type of in-app payment has prevented many other European game developers from launching their apps here in the states. Other European developers have stated that they will be removing their apps, for fear of a lawsuit from Lodsys. Other lawsuits that Start up Smart has informed that Lodsys is currently involved in, includes companies such as Apple, Electronic Arts, and Take- Two Interactive.
“The US patent system allows software implementations of ideas to be patented, which differs significantly from the European Union, although the European Parliament has been considering aligning patent rights with the US,” says Start up Smart.
“The growth of lawsuits in the US by so-called 'patent trolls' – which simply demand payments after assessing intellectual property rights – poses a major threat to the burgeoning mobile app market.”
“But different countries will have different vested interests, so it could be very difficult to come up with common protection that everyone’s going to be happy with,” they conclude with.
Rovio is known to be very vocal about their success. They have made claims that they are worth more than PopCap Games and that they plan to be as big as Google and Facebook. We will see if this lawsuit will set them back a bit.
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