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iPhone maker Apple has filed a motion to be allowed to intevene in the case IP outfit Lodsys brought against a number of iOS developers.
IP analyst and activist Florian Meuller said that he thought the motion to intervene was "fairly likely" to be granted by the court. Apple has already stated that it believes that the firm is licensed for the patent in dispute and by extension Apple developers are also.
One of the developers targetted, Icon Factory’s Craig Hockenberry, wrote in a blog post that license fees were a ‘slippery slope’ and that the prospect of ‘legal mess’ had ‘already started killing’ the developer’s enthusiasm for iOS and Mac development.
Meuller said that Apple and Google needed to answer the question as to what developers should do when faced with Lodsys’s royalty claims. Meuller also asked what Apple and Google were going to do "protect their app developers against patent assertions".
