The general background, necessary reading for basically all of us:

http://www.x-plane.com/x-world/lawsuit/

Specific lawsuit details:

http://www.x-plane.com/x-world/lawsuit/details/

Hilarious, it's a patent troll called Uniloc suing a guy for implementing a license-check-with-a-server in his Android app - apparently the one provided by Google for use in Android apps.

LANGUAGE OF THE DISPUTE: Paragraph 12 of the lawsuit states: ”Laminar Research is directly infringing one or more claims of the ’067 patent in this judicial district and elsewhere in Texas, including at least claim 107, without the consent or authorization of Uniloc, by or through making, using, offering for sale, selling and/or importing Android based applications for use on cellular phones and/or tablet devices that require communication with a server to perform a license check to prevent the unauthorized use of said application, including, but not limited to, X-Plane.”

Section 107 of the patent, which they claim I violated, contains: “107. …code for verifying the license data stored on the licensing medium by communicating with a registration authority having verification data….”

These guys seriously need to be beaten down. Their website says:

“In the device recognition space, for example, we believe that we have uncovered a billion dollar market … And it fits our straightforward development model. Look at many ideas. Pick an outstanding one. Patent it. Commercialize it. Reap the rewards.”

Either they were really careful with the patent application phrasing, or the PTO flubbed this one.

THE PATENT IN QUESTION: I'm reading the actual patent and seeing that it's about a license system which is in 3 parts: device, "portable license medium", and registration authority (presumably a remote server).

http://patft.uspto.gov/netacgi/nph-Parser?Sect1=PTO1&Sec...

MAIN IDEA: The primary claim is that the device checks the data on/from the license medium and compares it with verification data from the registration authority. The data may be a hash of the license data; it may be encrypted by a private-public key system; it may contain hardware identifiers so that the authority can check if the hardware is on an authorized list; it may be updated with new data from the authority; it may be limited by an expiry date; so on and so forth.

It goes on to talk about securing the licensing medium and data by means of a double verification process (through a "license manager").

LICENSING MEDIUM: The definition of the licensing medium:

The licensing medium 120 is a portable component that contains information concerning the software or other licensed electronic data that the user is authorized to access. When a user seeks to access a vended piece of electronic data, the client program communicates with the licensing medium 120 to verify that the user is authorized to access the electronic data.

In general, the licensing medium 120 may be any type of portable electronic data storage medium that has a unique, unalterable serial number or other form of identification that can be transmitted electronically. Examples include smart cards, memory sticks, magnetic strip cards, floppy disks and other removable computer storage media. The licensing medium 120 and the electronic device that uses the licensed electronic data need not have a wired connection. A wireless connection, e.g., an infrared or radio frequency (RF) link, may be used.

DOES THIS PATENT APPLY?: In general, this seems to be a patent on a license system involving a separate, "portable" license module (like a dongle or smartcard) that provides license data and can be updated with new license data from the server. Putting aside the question of whether this deserves a patent in the first place, I wonder what about the guy's Android app involves a separate, removable license medium. What's their basis for suing?

Especially in the light of:

Speaking for Laminar Research, we used only the technology that was provided to us by Google for copy protection in our Android App ‘X-Plane’… we used exactly the copy protection Google gave us! And, of course, this is what Google provides to EVERYONE ELSE THAT IS MAKING A GAME FOR ANDROID!

KEY CLAIM: And here's the claim at the heart of the dispute, which I should've gone to at the start:

107. Computer code executable on an electronic device to prevent unauthorized access to electronic data stored on the electronic device, the computer code comprising: code for storing license data on a portable licensing medium configured to communicate with the electronic device; code for determining whether to allow access to the electronic data based on the license data; code for verifying the license data stored on the licensing medium by communicating with a registration authority having verification data; and code for providing updated license data received from the registration authority to the licensing medium.

This very clearly says that the license data is stored on a "portable licensing medium". If they're referring to license data stored in the internal RAM or SD card of a smartphone, then it collapses to the traditional license-data-and-server model and it doesn't make sense to talk about a portable licensing medium any more.

It's patent nonsense, literally.