App developers facing legal action

Casey Needham

Some of your favorite apps for your iPhone, iPod, or iPad may be under attack as they face a potential lawsuit for infringing on a company’s patents.

Now, you might be thinking that the company trying to pursue these app developers is Apple, but Lodsys, a patent licensing operation, is threatening to take legal action against several developers for violations.

Lodsys has announced that they are ready to take legal action for violations of legal patent 7,222,078: "Methods and systems for gathering information from units of a commodity across a network."

One might wonder what that really means in English and PC Mag tells us that developers are being attacked for having an upgrade button within their app.

Several companies make lite versions of their apps available for download and they put an upgrade button within the app so that the customer can get the full version at any time for a price. This is where Lodsys comes in with their threats because having that upgrade button is where they violate the patent.

The problem is that these developers cannot really fight any legal battle because they are bound by the Apple iOS Paid Apps agreement. They can’t battle with Lodsys so all they can do is forward the paperwork on to Apple in hopes that they will do something.

This is highly likely, as it appears that Apple will take any action against Lodsys because having that upgrade button is essential to their App Store, says The Guardian.

More news will be available as the case progresses.