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About the author, Alexander Viken
I've been a technology enthusiast for most of my life and started my professional career as developer in 1993, working with web development and Perl CGI scripting. Since then I have work in a different smaller and larger companies as developer, architect and team leader. I have had positions as CTO for mobile development in Norway's biggest IT company Evry, and head mobile technology and strategy in one of the biggest digital communication agencies Creuna.
I've had a huge interest in mobile technology for many, many years and in 2009 I founded the first Windows Mobile/Phone Developer community here, The first time I was awarded MSFT MVP for Device Application Development was in June 2010.
In a diverse mobile technology world I have found that mono with MonoTouch and Mono for Android fills a gap that no one else has managed. C# now let's me develop software for iOS, Android and Windows Phone. Besides for development I also has strong opinions about user experience and graphical user interfaces.
In a non technical sense I have been acting as project manager for several years both for smaller in house projects but also with distributed teams located in India. SCRUM has always been the foundation for my tackle of projects and it was not until spring 2012 I started to "formalize" my knowledge with project management and passed PRINCE2 certification exam, with the goal to become an ITPP certified project manager as a "side" trade.
I like very much testing new things, hardware and software. If you have a product you think would be interesting to my readers and would like me to test and share my opinion about it please, use the contact page or twitter to
get in touch with me. I also have a norwegian blog about these same topics that can be found at http://mobilteknolog.no.
I am almost always available for questions and comments on twitter as @AlexanderViken
Patent troll threatens developers that use in-app purchase features
Commentary | May 16, 2011 by Alexander Viken
Just read an article in ars technica that several US-based iOS app developers that use in-app purchase button features to get users to buy full feature versions of their apps have received legal threats of patent infringement from a patent troll named Lodsys.
Apple hasn’t responded at all (as usual) to these threats even tho it could potentially be very damaging to its developer eco-system and economy. It would have been interesting to see someone battle this out in a court room. As far as I’ve been able to figure out this is a “local” US thing, so it doesn’t look like it’ll hit anywhere outside the US, or eastern Texas for that matter i guess.
These threats should also rise some interest at the Google and Microsoft HQ with the potential to kneecap a large revenue stream for all the mobile OS vendors.
Funny enough there’s a state in the US that is well-known by patent trolling lawyers, and where they tend to hold their court. Marshall, in eastern Texas is the home of what is known as a federal court that often sides with the trolls. Read more about that in the Technology Review article “A Heaven for Patent Pirates”
Link: Lodsys patent description
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Tags: apple, In-App Purchase, iOS, iPad, iphone, Lodsys, Patent, software, Texas