The green little pigs can finally have a break: The Angry Birds have a new enemy -- Lodsys, the patent licensing company that misidentified the birds as cash cows. In the latest amendment to its suit targeting various mobile app developers, Lodsys added five game makers to the defendant list -- Rovio, the Finnish game developer of Angry Birds; Electronic Arts; Atari; Square Enix and Take-Two Interactive. It had also dropped Wulven Games -- bringing the total defendants to eleven.

Defendant Rovio has infringed and continues to infringe, directly, indirectly, literally, under the doctrine of equivalents, contributory, and/or through the inducement of others, one or more of the claims of the '565 patent. Rovio makes, sells, uses, imports, and/or offers to sell infringing applications, including but not limited to Angry Birds for iPhone and Angry Birds for Android, which infringe at least claim 27 of the '565 patent under 35 U.S.C. 271.

According to FOSS Patents, Lodsys is currently suing 37 defendants -- including big names such as Canon, Hewlett Packard, Lexmark, Novell, Motorola, Brother, Adidas, Best Buy and The New York Times. Source: FOSS Patents Photo credit: Simon Q