Trolls Attack Developers

No, not these kind of trolls. But it's a scary thought.

As if making money from developing iOS apps wasn't hard enough, now there's a company that wants to take a piece of your action. That is, if you're using in-app purchasing, which is rapidly becoming the most popular way to monetize an iOS game. A company called Lodsys has warned iOS developers that they are in violation of its patent, and they want you to give them a percentage of your revenue from your iOS app. Some iOS developers are getting legal nastygrams from Lodsys threatening legal action if there's no response in 21 days. Or, I suppose, a check.

Apple has had no response so far, but they are doubtless concerned about the issue. After all, if iOS developers give up 30% to Apple they sort of expect that Apple will take care of legal challenges. Meanwhile, apparently Lodsys has been receiving a lot of feedback about their action, and they've started a blog in response. I doubt they'll find much sympathy for their position out there.

Apple needs to step in and take care of this, sooner rather than later. After all, Lodsys apparently has reached agreements with Apple (and Microsoft and other large companies), but they are trying to get a piece of the multibillion dollar app market, too. This greed may rebound on them if it encourages Apple and some of the other companies to wage legal war on them.