The creator of X-Plane, a flight simulator developed by Laminar Research, is raising funds and rallying support via petition to fight a patent lawsuit from Texas company Uniloc, TechCrunch reports.
Austin Meyer is being sued for using a copy-protection system frequently found in Android programs. According to Meyer, the technology the company used was provided by Google for the X-Plane Android app.
"We used exactly the copy protection Google gave us," Meyer said. "And, of course, this is what Google provides to everyone else that is making a game for Android!"
Uniloc, the pursuing party, is what Meyer calls a "patent troll," a company that aggressively pursues multiple patent lawsuits. In September 2012, Meyer was notified of the lawsuit against him for failing to license a patent for "code for verifying the license data stored on the licensing medium by communicating with a registration authority having verification data."
According to Meyer, Google will not help cover defense costs but are providing information to his lawyers. Meyer is currently accepting donations for court costs and holding a petition for a law that, if approved, would force patent trolls to pay all costs associated with their lawsuits upon losing.