iOS developers are organizing a boycott of Apple's in-app purchasing APIs in the hopes that it will goad Apple into responding to the lawsuits against developers using those APIs. More than a dozen independent developers have received letters notifying them that use of in-app purchases violates a US patent held by (apparent) patent troll Lodsys. Those developers don't have the resources to defend themselves against the patent claims, and developer and former Apple engineer Mike Lee believes Apple should step up and help them. So, he is organizing a boycott of in-app purchasing using Twitter hashtags and mass bug reports.

Last Friday, several developers began receiving letters via FedEx informing them that Lodsys believes their use of in-app purchasing violates a US patent that it bought from Intellectual Ventures (itself mired in controversy over its patent trolling practices). The developers were offered the choice of paying up for a license for past and future use of in-app purchase for upgrades in the next 21 days, or face an expensive and lengthy lawsuit. More developers, including Twitterrific maker Iconfactory, received similar letters this week.

The twist is that Apple created the APIs necessary to enable in-app purchasing, and has encouraged developers to use them. Lodsys has claimed that Apple licensed its patent, though so far it isn't clear under what context Apple acquired that license. Most likely, Apple originally licensed the patent from Intellectual Ventures, in a deal that covered Intellectual Ventures' entire portfolio. Whatever the case may be, Lodsys has also claimed that Apple's license doesn't extend to third-party developers.

These developers are now supposedly on the hook for using APIs that Apple supplied. For this reason alone, it seems Apple has some responsibility to respond to the threat. Still, the general consensus is that the patent in question—US Patent #772,078, "Methods and systems for gathering information from units of a commodity across a network"—is overly broad and could possibly be ruled invalid if any of the threatened developers took the case to trial.

Unfortunately, none of the developers targeted by Lodsys could afford the lengthy and expensive legal process required to invalidate the patent. This is yet another reason that developers believe Apple should step in; the company's legal team and deep pockets could fund an effort to rule the patent invalid, eliminating the need for any developer to either pay up or risk losing everything to legal fees.

While scattered reports have suggested that Apple's legal team is in fact crafting a response, the company has yet to respond to our (multiple) requests to confirm that fact. The company has also not responded to numerous developer inquires about the problem, either.

Mike Lee is attempting to rally developers to remove in-app purchasing from their apps and file bug reports with Apple noting the legal morass that could result from using those APIs. So far, some are getting behind his idea, filing duplicate bug reports and tweeting their support using the hashtag "#unlodsys."

"If we are going to get sued for using API, we have to not use that API," Lee told Ars. "That situation is untenable, and the sooner Apple figures that out the better."

For Lee, it's akin to the squeaky wheel getting the grease. "You can sit back and wait for Apple, wait for other people to get Apple's attention, or you can let them know just how you feel," he said. "So we do it loudly and in a concerted fashion."

The tactic has worked before, Lee explained. When Apple originally introduced the iPhone, it only offered support for Web-based apps. Without developers hounding Apple, the company might not have ever released the official iOS SDK that enabled native apps in the first place.

"If getting 200 duplicated bugs was enough to get us an SDK, let's see what the duplicates on this bug will accomplish," Lee said. "We can and should make this something on Steve Jobs' agenda this morning. This whole campaign is causing there to be an online conversation; people at Apple read the news too."

But the problem extends beyond iOS developers using Apple's in-app purchase APIs. While Google and Microsoft also have similar blanket licenses to the '078 patent by virtue of previous deals with Intellectual Ventures, according to Lodsys' logic, there is no reason that developers on Android or Windows Phone 7 platforms couldn't similarly be targeted over in-app purchase mechanisms.

Furthermore, if Lodsys' tactic of targeting small developers proves to be a lucrative one, the company (or others like it) might try to do the same with other patents. In fact, a company called MacroSolve is already issuing lawsuits against iOS and Android developers over a patent related to electronic forms transmitted to mobile devices via the Internet. The patent might seem ridiculous at first blush, but whether or not the patent is valid wouldn't matter—small, independent developers simply can't afford to fight these patents in court.

That's why Lee thinks his "#unlodsys" campaign is so important. "We want Lodsys to go down so hard at Apple's hand that it scares away anyone else looking at this monetization strategy," he told Ars.