The Macalope is going to take small exception to his editor (and kindly point him to the "even ours" part of the disclaimer at the bottom) :

Lodsys seems pretty sure of its position however. The company has promised that it will pay $1000 to any developer that it has accused of infringement if it is determined that Apple's license covers third-party developers.

If the company were sure of its position, it would have sued big-time developers, not the seven small shops it's picking on. After all, that's where the money is, right? Seems more to the Macalope like Lodsys is picking on the little guys in the hopes that Apple will step in and throw it some more cash for sitting on its butt and doing nothing. (To be fair, those holier-than-thou blog posts don't write themselves.) A $7000 bet to with a potential upside in the millions? That's not much of a risk.

While the system may be "established and known," that doesn't mean it doesn't suck. It's not protecting the people it should be protecting: the people who are creating value.

How can the Macalope state that without legal footing? Because, having read Lodsys's crappy patent, he can tell you categorically that no one at Apple or The Iconfactory or anywhere else got the idea for in-app purchases from reading it. So, once we've dispensed with the idea that something has been directly stolen from Lodsys, we're left with the concept that it should be able to purchase loosely-defined ideas and then hold them for ransom, with no intention of ever using them itself. This is not "intellectual property," it's intellectual hostage-taking.