Washington, D.C. (June 12, 2013) – Today in a court filing, the Application Developers Alliance argued the makers of user-configurable software are not directly liable when the user is capable of configuring the software in a way that infringes a patent.
“App developers cannot be held liable for misuse of their products by customers. The law has been clear on this issue: the person who configures the final product is the only party liable for patent infringement. In this case, however, no users configured the software in a way that violated the patent except for the patent holder. No infringement actually occurred,” said Jon Potter, President of the Application Developers Alliance.
The Alliance joined with HTC, Limelight Networks, Xilinx, the American Bankers Association, the Electronic Frontier Foundaton, and Professor Tim Holbrook to file the amicus brief in Versata Software v. SAP America.
Read the full brief here (PDF).
About the Application Developers Alliance
The Application Developers Alliance is an industry association dedicated to meeting the unique needs of application developers as creators, innovators, and entrepreneurs. Alliance members include more than 20,000 individual application developers and more than 125 companies, investors, and stakeholders in the apps ecosystem.
