Legal ramifications difficult to fathom
Those costs cut both ways, though, especially if Lodsys takes action against each developer individually
A further option available to developers would be to have Lodsys’s patents declared invalid, a process that requires filing a petition with the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office
That would rack up some high legal bills for what, in the end, could amount to a very small payout on an individual basis, since many of the developers receiving claims from Lodsys have been small firms with modest revnue from the App Store
“Fighting Lodsys as a group in court could have advantages for the developers from at least a legal fees perspective, since they may be able to aggregate costs for some aspects of their defense,” said Lazaris
“If Lodsys has success in getting smaller developers to license its intellectual property in the iOS developer ecosystem, then there will surely be others that follow,” said Hockenberry. “It’s only half a percent now, but who’s to say the next patent infringement isn’t going to be 1 percent or 5 percent or 20 percent
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