Last week a patent holding company called Lodsys starting sending letters to iOS developers alleging that that they were, by using Apple’s developer APIs, infringing on a patent that Lodsys holds. Apple has now stepped in by contacting Lodsys and insisting that the patent in question is covered for third-party developer use under the terms of Apple’s license agreement. Apple has also asked that Lodsys stop contacting its iDevelopers regarding patent infringement.
The patent in question (US Patent Number 7222078) covers ‘Methods and systems for gathering information from units of a commodity across a network’ and Lodsys has been using it to frighten the life out of developers that make use of in-app purchasing in their products. The developers in question approached Apple to ask them to step in.
The letter from Apple’s Bruce Sewell to Lodsys was seen by Ars Technica and a portion of it reads: Thus, the technology that is targeted in your notice letters is technology that Apple is expressly licensed under the Lodsys patents to offer to Apple’s App Makers. These licensed products and services enable Apple’s App Makers to communicate with end users through the use of Apple’s own licensed hardware, software, APIs, memory, servers, and interfaces, including Apple’s App Store. Because Apple is licensed under Lodsys’ patents to offer such technology to its App Makers, the App Makers are entitled to use this technology free from any infringement claims by Lodsys. “
Lodsys has refuted the claims that Apple’s license covers third-party devs, stating on their website last week, “The scope of their current licenses does NOT enable them to provide “pixie dust” to bless another (3rd party) business applications. The value of the customer relationship is between the Application vendor of record and the paying customer, the OS (is acting as an enabler) and the retailers (are acting as a conduit to connect that value), and taking their % for that middleman role.”
Lodsys may still move forward with court action against the smaller developers already approach but at least the devs will have Apple backing them up on this one.
Brett Venter
