What to make of this? When James Wilson of LithiumCorp (makers of the iPad app Tweed) went to submit an update last night, he noticed a new question lurking about in the process:
Are you updating this app because of a legal issue?
This one should be particularly interesting for anyone following the Lodsys patent debacle (tl;dr: a bunch of iOS developers get legal threats from Lodsys over patents they claim the developers are infringing. Apple sends an open letter to Lodsys declaring that iOS developers are covered under licensing agreements between Apple/Lodsys — and Lodsys responds by turning their prior legal threats into actual lawsuits). We’re all still waiting to see how Apple plans on dealing with all of this — they’ve got to do something, else risk losing their App Store’s momentum to a hungry horde of patent trolls picking away at their developer’s pockets.
This question seems to be Apple’s first pass at figuring out who exactly is under fire. While it’s pretty easy to figure who Lodsys has sued by searching through filings, it’s much more difficult to figure out who has merely been threatened. Might Apple be considering putting some of that 30% cut they take on app sales towards legal counsel for those involved?