Open-source Patent Troll

32 points

15 years ago

I've been writing open-sourced software for a few years now, and never in all these years past have I ever had another person threaten me with patent action on something that I provided for free - for the developer community. Just because I feel bad for this guy, I am not going to post his email address or name, but I will share the email that he sent me:

"""

Azoff,

My name is [ Mr. Troll ]. I am writing you from a company called RazDog.com. We have several patents pending for the rights to navigate like a smart phone on any web content deployed through a browser. We have software which we have had publically available for some time.

We have been made aware of your software which appears to potentially breach our patents pending.

I need you to call me to discuss options ASAP.

Your valuable time is appreciated.

"""

In case you are wondering, the software referred to by Mr. Troll is most likely a jQuery plug-in I currently maintain called OverScroll (http://github.com/azoff/overscroll). I first released it into the public domain back in 2009 (see: http://plugins.jquery.com/node/8738), about the same time RazDog was apparently in the music business and had nothing to do with user interaction on the web (see: http://web.archive.org/web/20090503201355/http://razdog.com/consumers_info.aspx).

Never, ever, in my time as a professional developer did I ever think I would have to deal with this blatant disregard for open-sourced contribution and innovation.

Mr. Troll, you are a vulture.

- Azoff