Rage Against Patent Troll.
On Friday May 13th, 2011 some iOS App Developers revealed that they are being sued by Lodsys for In-App Purchases and Upgrade Links. This lawsuit baffles many developers since Developers are using API in iOS SDK provided by Apple for In-App Purchasing. Lodsys so far is suing the Developers, but not Apple.
Adam C. Engst provided a great analysis on the matter.
It’s entirely unclear why Lodsys has chosen this approach — their lawyers have undoubtedly read the iOS Developer Program License Agreement and know that the iOS developers can’t settle. And they’ve chosen such small targets that there’s no way they could even cover their legal fees with what they could squeeze out. The only strategy that makes sense is that by targeting small developers, they put additional pressure on Apple to settle quickly.
Apple should respond to this lawsuit even though it is not yet directed at them.
In the meantime, this is what the iPad think about Lodsys:
That makes a lot of sense.
