Rackspace has declared that we are all now free to rotate our smartphones. They announced that they have won their Inter Partes Review (IPR) challenge against “patent troll” Rotatable Technologies over the rotating technology that they were trying to have patented with the US Patent and Trademark Office. Rotatable had previously sued Rackspace over the screen rotation technology, which the former claims they own the patent to.
According to a post on Rackspace’s website. the USPTO has declared that Rotatable Technology’s US Pat. No. 6,326,978 is unpatentable. Last year, Rotatable filed a case against Rackspace saying that they were the ones who owned the technology that allows apps and smartphones to rotate when you turn them whichever way you want (unless you use the lock screen rotation option of course). They asked for $75,000 just to drop the suit, but Rackspace refused to do so, as per their company policy not to pay out in cases like this. Rotatable then offered to just drop the case without any settlement, but Rackspace decided to challenge the patent in the USPTO. The result is now their patent has been declared invalid and so they cannot sue further any other companies they were suing or planning to sue.
Rackspace also said that they have looked at other case studies and found out that companies like Rotatable lose 88% of the time when the defendants refuse to settle their cases and instead fight them all the way. They consider these cases as “extortion attempts” since the lawsuits they file are frivolous and have no purpose except to get money from companies like Apple, Netflix, Electronic Arts, Target and others.
Rackspace says they use the standard screen rotation functionality from platforms like Apple and Android to be able to use this for the mobile cloud apps that they develop. They are encouraging other tech companies to exert pressure on the “patent trolls” and the country’s laws so that these cases will not reach the court stage even and waste valuable time and money just to be able to resolve the lawsuits.
SOURCE: Rackspace
