It's good to see apple stand up for their developers, but does the license Apple has apply to the developers? The developers are, after all, the ones technically infringing on the patents.
From the article: This defense is known as "exhaustion" — the third parties in question should be covered by the original license, so patent owners can't claim infringement by those third parties.
The company asserts that developers are its business partners, and therefore Apple has a material interest in protecting those partners from being sued over technology that it has previously licensed. The heart of the dispute hinges on the licensing terms Apple received from Intellectual Ventures, though the details of those terms apparently cannot be publicly revealed.
Apple believes the licence it has protects its partners. Without seeing the terms of the licence it is impossible to say if this is the case, but it is certainly possible.
> Apple believes the licence it has protects its partners. Without seeing the terms of the licence it is impossible to say if this is the case, but it is certainly possible.
And it certainly seems silly that Apple would not have sought those terms in its license. Of course, patent licenses don't often appeal to common sense, but the one thing Apple has is foresight.
I'm not inclined to believe in any charitable intent with Apple's move. Apple's target focus has traditionally been about the users (user experience, user interface etc.) and seldom about developers.
Apple needs this. Else it will potentially lose its 30% cut off all in-app purchases.
I think Apple should defend developers. Particularly because they were the one's who enabled the feature and made the API accessible to developers. And considering how closed Apple is about iOS and some of their natives APIs, allowing this particularly feature to be released is a big deal.
> I would assume we would need more information about the license to know for sure.
Not necessarily. There are limitations on patents that prevent you as a patent holder from successfully suing the customers who buy widgets from me for patent infringement if I have a valid license for that patent from you.
In this case, since the Intellectual Ventures ("Lodsys") patents cover both client and server mechanisms, and Apple owns and makes the server side processes, and Apple has a valid license, the argument is that the same principle applies.
Are they though? The app I write that you download from the store doesn't infringe the patent. Its only when its combined with the OS libraries and executed by the user that a system that infringes the patent exists.
