Defendant In Lodsys Suit Seeks To Invalidate All Four Patents In Illinois Federal Court

We have been following the development in the Lodsys case for a while now. Lodsys has sued app developers claiming that the devs are infringing on patents that Lodsys owns for specific technologies that are used in a lot of Apple apps and some Android apps. The suit is ongoing and so far other than writing letters and telling devs that its license covers them Apple has done very little and Google has done less than that.

Yesterday a company based in Michigan called ForeSee Results field a declaratory judgment action against all for Loadsys patents that are at the heart of the case. The complaint filed by ForeSee Results says that Lodsys has "threatened assertion" of one or more of its patents against ForeSee's customers and then went on to give examples of the companies that have received letters. The companies that received letters include Adidas, Best Buy, and WE Energies. FOSS Patents reports that by suing in another district other than the Eastern District of Texas where Lodsys filed its complaint.

The judge in that Eastern Texas court has a history of siding with the patent holder, which is why we see so many cases of this sort happen in East Texas. With ForeSee filing its action in Northern District of Illinois if Lodsys files infringement actions in Eastern Texas court, ForeSee could request that the case be transferred to the Illinois courtroom where the judge might be less prone to side with the patent holder. Apparently, many companies are now formally headquartered in East Texas because of the courts noted leanings toward patent holders and in Lodsys' case the CEO and only employee of the company are both living and conducting business in the jurisdiction of the Illinois court. A ruling in this case could help others that are being sued and lack the funds to mount a defense themselves. If the court in Illinois finds the patents invalid all of this would go away.