Patent holding firm Lodsys today published a series of blog posts revealing that the company has filed suit against some App Store developers, accelerating its efforts to extract licensing fees from developers for using in app purchases and upgrade links in their App Store applications. Lodsys had given developers 21 days to negotiate a license before filing suit, but the firm appears to have initiated lawsuits early in order to thwart Apple's efforts to back the developers. More details, directly from the bastards themselves, at the Lodsys blog. Florian Muellre writes on FOSS Patents: For the app developers who have been sued, this is now a very critical situation. As I explained in my Lodsys FAQ, patent litigation in the United States is extremely costly. The most important thing for those app developers is to clarify with Apple — and to the extent that Android apps are involved, with Google — whether they will be held harmless and receive blanket coverage including possible damage awards.