In a move that has surprised many, fruity cargo cult Apple has stepped up to the plate to defend its app store developers from a patent troll.
Apple has been quiet since iOS developers started moaning about getting lawyerly letters from an outfit called Lodsys demanding cash for its technology being used in their software.
Apple had paid for a licence for the technology and has warned Lodsys that it is fully prepared to defend Apple's licence rights.
In short it is declaring war to defend its app ecosystem from threats by "patent trolls".
According to the Guardian, Apple's legal team has shot back with a legal letter that indicates that the multi-billion dollar outfit is not happy outfit.
Bruce Sewell, the head lawyer in Apple's legal department, and latterly at Intel, has penned a stiff missive to Mark Small, the chief executive of Lodsys.
He said that Apple was a licensee of the relevant patents and the Apple App Makers are protected.
He said that there was no basis for Lodsys's infringement allegations against Apple's App Makers, and the outfit should sling its hook.
Sewell systematically pulled apart Lodsys's reasoning against a number of app developers who had been served with legal papers.
Lodsys's claim against the developers is invalidated because "the allegedly infringing acts require the use of Apple's APIs to provide two-way communication", as well as the physical memory which is provided again by Apple and claims as its "central location" the Apple App Store.
In short, the technology that is targeted is technology that Apple is licensed under the Lodsys patents to offer to Apple's App Makers, Sewell said.
Apple has insisted that Lodsys immediately withdraw all notice letters sent to Apple App Makers and cease its false assertions that the App Makers have infringed any Lodsys patent.
We doubt that Lodsys will go away, but it is nice to see Apple do the right thing for developers. It is probably a sign of the Apocalypse, that and me praising something that Jobs' Mob has done.
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I should loik to see a class-action suit against Lodshyys - from all of the Apple App Makers.
Even if Steve Jobs refusenik and won't take up the Tribal Scepter and thereby become the "Mustapha Mond" of the downtrodden Apple developers, then thereto have ye Charlie Gilmour, son of Pink Floyd guitarist Dave, and he shall have to do, as good as he gets in the face of the protest, shouting it out to Homertons and Brixtons and the Cowley Roads, to Bloomsbury'd and Whitehaull and Dooning Street.
And in that hour, the despotic hordes of Shmark Shmall shall know that what this trollish privation shall not withstand the coming Apocalypse of the Apple's sanctified army of the god's ernest trvth. Whereas never in the field of human conflicts is as wieldy is it where so much is owned by so many put out to be as so behovenly owed to so few heretics and Lodsys the same; and who have no shiny gadgets as "goodthinkful" testaments to the one truer faith. Therefore It is to wage wholly war, by sea, land and air, with all our might and with all the strength of the robed wigged ones what the tablets of god can give us: to wage a Macful war against a monstrous and abominable Lodsys tyranny, here as it is never surpassed in the dark lamentable catalogue of humanity's greed where under the spreading chestnut tree I sold you and you sold me. Here we shall fight the blighters on beaches, landing grounds, in fields, in streets and on the hills, and on and on and for a thousand years, Fanboys shall say, "This was their finest hour, and put out his eye, innit?"