Rotatable Technologies is now an ex-patent troll. I say “ex-troll” because its patent, US Pat. No. 6,326,978, has been declared unpatentable by the US Patent and Trademark Office in response to a challenge (called an Inter Partes Review, or IPR) filed by Rackspace. This continues our streak of challenging, and winning, against patent trolls.
Let’s rewind: Last year, a patent troll called Rotatable Technologies sued Rackspace. Rotatable owned a patent that it claimed covers the screen rotation technology that comes standard in just about every smartphone. You know, when you flip your device sideways and the screen shifts orientation from portrait mode to landscape mode? Like nearly all the apps in the Apple and Android app stores, Rackspace uses standard functionality provided by Apple’s libraries and Android open source software to provide this display feature in our mobile cloud applications.
Rotatable sued us and immediately asked for $75,000 to go away. We refused. And we fought. It’s Rackspace policy to not pay off patent trolls, even if it costs us more to fight. Eventually Rotatable offered to just walk away – but we refused again. Just as we promised last year, we challenged the patent and the USPTO invalidated it.
This means that Rackspace will not pay one penny to this troll, nor will Apple, Netflix, Electronic Arts, Target, Whole Foods or any of the other companies sued by Rotatable for how they use screen rotation technology in their apps.
According to recent studies, patent trolls lose 88 percent of the time when defendants go all the way. With some of the recent changes in the law it is also much easier for those of us who are sued by a troll to recoup our fees from these extortion attempts, validating our business decision to pursue every case to the hilt.
We are still fighting some of the trolls that have come after us and we expect to win those cases too. Without changes in the law we believe that the only way to end the plague of patent trolls is by fighting every troll that comes at us – and we encourage all others to do the same.
/me hands Van the fearsome two-handed Great Sword “Troll-smiter Death-bringer”, which was forged by Weyland Smith in the Pits of Doom. Take this, worthy warrior, and lead your team to glory, honor, and freedom from useless-but-potentially-expensive-in-terms-of-both-money-and-time distractions! Destruction to the trolls!!
Yessssssss!
Good on you all for seeing it through to the end!
Trolls aren’t the issue. We need to abolish ALL software patents.
Thanks to Rackspace for fighting this. We all benefit from companies helping to fight the extortionist tactics patent trolls use.
Yes Rackspace!
Sweet. Thank you.
guys, seriously, thanks.
this really speaks about the moral of the company and I love it, proud of you
Was the patent invalidated because, “on a computer” or was there another reason, like obviousness?
This is how its done. Nice work Rackspace, kudos…
This warms the cockles of my heart.
Keep up the good fight!
Thank you! I’ve never hosted anything with you, but you guys will be the first one I look into for my next project.
Good work!
I might just start using your service to thank you for this war on trolls. Seriously guys, you’re doing us all a huge service, fight on!
Nice!
Thanks Rackspace! You just made the tech world a better place!
So did Rotatable also have to pay for Rackspace’s legal costs?
Thanks huge. I’ve always been an admirer of your company, but now even more.
yea, wow. fantstic ethos
thank you!!
Awesome! Well done!
The far bigger issue here is – how/why did the USPTO grant them a patent in the first place??? Thanks for fighting that patent. USPTO needs new management and an overhaul.
F*** YEAH!
Thanks
Rackspace has best price on business email accounts. And now this? Unstoppableeeee!
Thanks Fight the good fight. Take them to court make them bleed and go out of businesses.
Wow!!
How about a link to the actual court documents and some information on the “leadership” behind Rotatable? Pictures of the “executives” would be handy too. Any web search for them should bring up this fantastic news.
My company was at the beginning of developing a relationship with Rackspace, but I told them about how strongly Rackspace prefers to pay patent litigators rather than the inventor of inventions that Rackspace has copied, so as I understand it, our company has decided to look elsewhere for a vendor. Our company values our inventions and we value the time our engineers have put into the inventions. Rackspace just isn’t a trusthworthy company.