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Apple's in-app purchase dialogue.(Credit: Apple)
The coast may not be clear for developers who thought that Apple could protect them against a company seeking to tax developer revenue.
A week after being told by Apple that its license of four patents covered iOS developers against being targeted for patent licenses to use in-app purchasing, patent holdings group Lodsys has said that's not the case.
In a post on the group's blog this afternoon (via Macrumors), the group said that after reading Apple's claims as well as consulting "several legal experts," developers who have implemented in-app purchasing are still on the hook to pay Lodsys a percentage of their revenue to avoid litigation.
"We stand firm and restate our previous position that it is the third-party developers that are responsible for the infringement of Lodsys' patents and they are responsible for securing the rights for their applications," the group wrote in a post. "Developers relying on Apple's letter do so to their own detriment and are strongly urged to review Apple's own developer agreements to determine the true extent of Apple's responsibilities to them."
Lodsys began targeting iOS developers earlier this month, sending them letters notifying them that their mobile applications were infringing on four patents. The group sought a percentage of each application developer's revenue, even threatening to go back to collect income that had already been earned. More recently, the group has taken aim at Android, targeting at least one developer with nearly identical letters over the use of in-app billing.
Apple's response, posted in a letter by Apple Senior Vice President and general counsel Bruce Sewell last week, said the company's developers were "undisputedly licensed" in the patents Lodsys was asserting based on its own licensing deal with the group. Apple also argued that the illustrated infringement of Lodsys' patents were further flawed in that it relied on Apple's application programming interfaces, Apple ID system, and its hardware, software, and servers.
In Lodsys' post today, the group said it has sent a written response to Apple with "a detailed legal position on the license interpretation issue," as well as permission to share it with developers.
Apple did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
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