“Following a series of legal threats by patent holder Lodsys, Apple has reportedly suspended approval of at least some iOS applications that utilize the in-app purchasing feature,” Katie Marsal reports for AppleInsider.
“News that App Store approvals from Apple were frozen was reported Wednesday by TUAW,” Marsal reports. “It’s not yet known whether the suspension is related to legal threats that were recently sent by Lodsys to a number of iOS developers, or if it is a separate technical issue.”
Marsal reports, “The downtime associated with the App Store has led to speculation that Apple has suspended approval of new and updated applications that utilize in-app purchases. Apple has yet to respond to the legal threats toward iOS developers by patent holder Lodsys, but a report from earlier this week claimed that the iPhone maker’s legal department is ‘actively investigating’ the matter.”
Read more in the full article here.
[Thanks to MacDailyNews Reader “Lynn W.” for the heads up.]
Related articles:
Lodsys defends legal threats: Apple is licensed, iOS developers are not – May 16, 2011
Lodsys threatens Apple App Store devs with lawsuit over In-App Purchases – May 13, 2011
Software patents on obvious business methods: Limiting innovation (other than creative attempts to get around them–but see the Broken Window Fallacy) since the 1990s.
And instead of trying to fix the patent system, the current US House majority wants to cut their budget. That cut gets us slower and less detailed analysis than the crappy service we have now. What a plan! Cut the resources, then complain about how they aren’t doing the job.
Let’s see…what to do with $60,000,000,000? Time for an aquisition!
Then go after the Android application developers who use in-app purchases!
Lodsys loses the revenue from Apples license as well as any developer revenue, since Apple won’t approve apps with in app purchase. Way to let your greed get the best of you, Lodsys.
Here’s hoping Apple is busy re-tooling the in-app purchase systems in the SDK to circumvent the Lodsys patent trolling scumbags…
Fuck Lodsys. To all Developers out there, IGNORE them. Just carry on with business as usual. Apple will mop these guys up.
Apple needs to “handle” this situation with Lodsys in order to protect developers fro it’s iOS eco system. They need to do this either through buying the company, buying a blanket license that covers all developers. This would provide the certainty and security for developers to invest in writing apps for the iOS platform.
NOTE: Today this report is being regarded as erroneous.
Nothing indicates that Apple’s action has anything to do with the Lodsys letters to developers. It is considered a mere coincidence that someone noticed some apps were being delayed by Apple, when in fact it was simply part of Apple’s standard vetting procedures.
IOW: Never mind!
It’s a shame, as I’ve come to like the in-app purchase system. Case in point (at least for me): I’ve recently become a huge fan of Hidden Objects games on my iPhone 4. With developer Big Fish Games making some of the best of them, I find it more enjoyable to download one of their games for free, play a few levels, and then if I decide I want to play the rest of the game levels, I can make the in-app purchase and just continue on where I left off. Whereas with the more common method of trying out the free lite version of the game first, after completing the free levels and deciding I’m willing to pay for the rest of the levels, I would have to buy the paid version separately and then start all over again from scratch, which is very annoying!
So the in-app purchasing system makes perfect sense to me, at least for hidden object game apps.
And so I’m going to miss this if it eventually becomes a universal approach to selling all apps in The App Store. 🙁