January 24, 2013, Columbia, South Carolina. A White House Petition has been launched by Laminar Research, creators of the world renowned X-Plane Flight Simulator. The purpose of the petition is to persuade the government to make it more difficult for companies known as patent trolls to file frivolous patent lawsuits. A lawsuit was recently brought against Laminar Research by Uniloc (a company that has filed countless lawsuits, but does not have any history of developing or selling flight simulators), claiming that X-Plane for Android infringes on “their” ideas.
A patent troll is a company that files or purchases patents (often from failing or bankrupt companies) with the sole intention of suing companies that exercise common practices described by those patents. Estimates on patent infringement cases filed by patent trolls has risen from only a few percent in recent history to an estimated one third of all current patent lawsuits, costing businesses billions of revenue lost to these frivolous lawsuits.
Austin Meyer, Laminar Research and X-Plane Founder, stated during a recent CBS This Morning interview regarding the lawsuit filed against his company, “It’s the technology on which all Android apps that I know of are based … I will spend everything I have or will have because I believe this is wrong.”
The White House Petition’s goal is to raise 100,000 signatures, which will result in the White House issuing an official response to the petition and raise awareness among elected officials.
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X-Plane 10 Global is the world’s most comprehensive and powerful flight simulator for personal computers offering the most realistic flight model available. X-Plane is not a game, but an engineering tool that can be used to predict the flying qualities of fixed- and rotary-wing aircraft with incredible accuracy. The program predicts the performance and handling of almost any aircraft. A great tool for pilots at all levels of learning and currency in a simulator flying like the real airplane; for the engineer to predict how a new airplane will fly; and for aviation enthusiasts to explore the world of aircraft flight dynamics. X-Plane 10, it’s what real pilots fly!
For more information about X-Plane, visit X-Plane.com.
