Apple have stuck to their principles and are going in with all guns blazing. Uploaded by Foss Patents are the actual documents filed to the courts and they make for solid reading. In them Apple state: “Apple…hereby respectfully moves to intervene as a defendant and counterclaim plaintiff in the…action brought by plaintiff Lodsys…against seven software application developers…for allegedly infringing U.S. Patent Nos. 7,222,078…and 7,620,565… Apple seeks to intervene because it is expressly licensed to provide to the Developers products and services that embody the patents in suit, freefrom claims of infringement of those patents.” It goes on to cite a long list of prior court rulings that may apply to the case and so on. The documents are very long and an interesting read (if you like that sort of thing) but there are two messages here: Apple will not abandon its developers (they dare not or their platform won’t fare so well in the longer term) and this response was not thrown together in a few hours.

As I covered previously the more voices in this chorus of opposition to Lodsys the better, but we’ll have to wait and see if any others join in. So far the other players in this game (namely Google and Microsoft) have been relatively quiet - at least publicly. They may be taking the back seat and waiting to see how Apple fare or they may be playing behind the scenes. Whilst Lodsys may move to dismiss their intervention, given that the issue in question would not have occurred without Apples creation of the iOS platform, the court is unlikely to dismiss Apples intervention.

Whatever happens from here - this is unlikely to end soon. At least developers know that they have some friends in Cupertino.