∞ Developers remove apps from US store, fearing patent lawsuits

Charles Arthur writing for The Guardian:

App developers are withdrawing their products for sale from the US versions of Apple’s App Store and Google’s Android Market for fear of being sued by companies which own software patents – just as a Mumbai-based company has made a wide-ranging claim against Microsoft, Apple, Google, Yahoo and a number of other companies over Twitter-style feeds, for which it claims it has applied for a patent.

I think people and companies should be able to protect their ideas, but some of these patents are just crazy. I’m not sure what the solution is, but something has to be done.