This is so illustrative of how broken the US patent system is. Junk patents based on pure, simplistic nonsense get awarded, and the only way of invalidating them (aside from rare presidential intervention) is to pay for six figures and up worth of legal representation?
The mistake was caving into big business and allowing software patents.
The US Patent Office needs to take the initiative and assemble a series of boards comprised of unbiased members of the scientific community who can go in, look at existing patents in their area of specialty, and invalidate in one shot any that don't pass scientific muster. It shouldn't take court cases to fix this.
Especially, they shouldn't be decided by juries made up of non-programmers.
They're greedy bullies, who count on intimidating small developers into ponying up, so they can line their pockets with proceeds from patents they have already collected on, from APPLE.
Compared to what the government and app stores take, Lodsys is peanuts.
If a developer sells $1,000 worth of in-app purchases, then about...
- $300 goes to the app store owner. (30% fee)
- $150 goes to taxes. (15% bracket)
- $4 goes to Lodsys. (0.575% of remaining)
So out of ~$454 in expenses, $4 goes to Lodsys. A large coffee. No wonder many devs just give in and pay.
To me, it's the app store royalty that's the real rip-off. No way do they deserve 30% of an in-app purchase. That's extortion, because the developer is not allowed to use any other payment method.