Apple's License Claim Disputed

I'm shocked, shocked to find that Lodsys disputes Apple's claims.

What do you expect? "Sorry, we realize now that our entire reason for existence is void, so we'll just go away now."

I find it odd that they are reaching out to the developer community rather than strictly taking a legal course of action. Why communicate to the public at all? Its not like they are trying to foster a customer base and I'm certainly not going to feel better about getting extorted by them because I've heard their point of view.

That's kind of old: May 31.

Some more recent shenanigans from Lodsys: http://www.groklaw.net/article.php?story=20110828073533134

My favourite is where Lodsys wants to conduct discovery in order to find out from Apple what the exact terms are of Apple's license to Lodsys' patent. Apparently Lodsys didn't perform due diligence when they bought the patent.

I don't know why they even bother having a blog… Do they think they are going to win people over?

It's positively hilarious how many Facebook likes they are getting.

I'm not shocked at all that they disabled comments.

Hey developers - remember, we plan to sue you for using technology Apple provides to you. We realize everyone was thrilled that we won't do that, but we will try our best to do that.

Patents are supposed to be a compromise in order to facilitate new technology disclosure to the public. Does anyone realistically think that without Lodsys, in-app purchasing would have never appeared? Rather, only the negative side of the compromise is invoked: we must pay Lodsys because it acted quickly and submitted a patent for something that is obvious.