Who is worried?

wow googles screwed too... chrome app srtore as some

 

Your post was incredibly vague. I'm guessing no one is worried because they don't have a clue what the legal action is aimed at specifically.

 

Some patent holding company is suing random developers that use in-app purchases based on a patent from years ago. Just a random money grab IMO

 

it would be usefull to at least post your source of information plop..

http://www.macrumors.com/2011/05/13/lodsys-threatens-to-sue-app-store-developers-over-purchase-links/

company in question is Lodsys.. googling them shows its one of "thoose" companies who just exist because us patent laws are a joke.

 

Does that not just come down on Apple then? It's their technology, right? Why should a developer be responsible?

 

The developer plays by apples rules, but in the end its your software, apple just distribute it, so from a legal standpoint you are soley responsible for it.

But i have no doubt that apple will step to protect their app store (they definatly dont care about individual developers)

 

That may not be entirely true: http://tidbits.com/article/12174

 

i don't see the point..

if you purchase the right to use software x (which you do by purchasing a dev license) but software x contains part y which may infringe on someone else ip then yes you are responsible for that part in your software.

but liability here can be complicated.. if you used not rightly covered software from apple who licensed it to you they would be reliable for any damage you would encounter by using their software. so if party y sues you (which they do not at the time being) you could sue apple for damaged received by their faulty licensed software.

that would be independant from apple/party y beef about them selling product x to customers which contains no properly licensed parts y..


but copyright law is different from country to country and any claim is just a claim until proven.

also license agreements are NOT! law or need to be lawfull.. for what its worth the hole license agreement between different parties could be completly bolocks in the eye of the law, but until the agreement is completly disected by a judge (and possible instances) the thing is only black print on white paper..

that a reason all german license agreements i've yet completly read (not that many it gets boring quickly) have usualy a passus which states that if any of the points in the license agreements is faulty it does not change the other points till proven faulty aswell.

i somehow assume that this is similar in other countries too.


there is a reason why such legal battles take years and consume enourmous amounts of money.. because its an complex overbloated system which gets even worser if you step out into the international market..

i had my share of thoose over the years and there is nothing more annoying than wasting time of your life on such a stupidity the legal system can be.

every business should have a legal protection insurance nower days.. no matter if tiny or big indie. thoose couple euros a month can save you alot of headage

 

And Apple seems to have put limits into the dev agreement as to what a dev can do in such a case, without prior consent. The next week will be very interesting. If Apple says nothing, while X number of devs are coerced into paying a license fee for something Apple encouraged them to integrate, then that's the worst kind of PR possible going into WWDC in June. If Apple indemnifies all devs, then the patent troll is getting exactly what they'd hoped for: a quick and direct line to Apple.

 

well again i can't speak for us law.. but over here you should be carefull in what you agree to if someone claims.. because here even if the claim is wrong but you agreed to accept thoose you are bound to thoose terms then..

i think they apporached the "small" guys because they are an easier target to scare into accepting the claims.. and backed up by a hand full of accepted claims lodsys might think it would strenghten their position..

as for a quick and direct line.. you have a direct line to apples law department the second you send them a c&d claim.. so their apporach to target smaller devs is more then shady.. but honestly what do you expect from such companies who just exist to "defend" phony ip they sit on.

 

Yes, it's all 100% shady, and that fact is emphasized by their blog posts today: http://www.lodsys.com/blog.html

It's a shakedown, pure and simple.

 

from their website

well thats interesting.. if apple is really a licensor it will be interesting to see if they and how they will act to protect their developers, this will be an interesting one because it can have a huge impact..

if i would guess one of the bigger parties will go to court and get the ancient loosely formulated patent removed.

 

This part may be very telling of their ultimate goal:

Q: I developed on Apple iOS (or other platform), why isn’t Apple (or other OS vendor) responsible, or taking care of this issue?

"...One blogger suggested that an OS or device vendor or retailer could choose to contact Lodsys and purchase a license on behalf of its application ecosystem, but so far such discussions haven’t taken place."


It's certainly not cost effective to try to get yearly fees from hundreds of thousands of developers. But collecting a single voluntary fee from Apple is.

 

hehe yeah makes sense.. and would be definatly what lodsys would aim as the jackpot..

from a economical standpoint it would make no sense to aim at every single tiny developer offering iap or update functions. their income is way to low to get a reasonable sum out of them. 0,5x percent in their example figure..

 

Exactly. In most cases, the cost of collecting the fee would be greater than the fee itself.

 

Can anyone make sense of this patent? Reading it is quite painful...

http://patft.uspto.gov/netacgi/nph-Parser?Sect1=PTO1&Sect2=HITOFF&d=PALL&p=1&u=%2Fnetahtml%2FPTO%2Fsrchnum.htm&r=1&f=G&l=50&s1=7222078.PN.&OS=PN/7222078&RS=PN/7222078

 

Apparently someone has tried to patent The Internet.
Disclaimer: Just talking to myself(pp)

 

interesting read

http://fosspatents.blogspot.com/2011/05/what-app-developers-need-to-know-about.html