Apple licensed US Patent #772,078 from original owner Intellectual Ventures to allow for in-app purchases of iOS apps. The patent, now owned by Lodsys, covers "Methods and systems for gathering information from units of a commodity across a network." Lodsys started suing iOS developers for patent infringement and Apple filed a motion to intervene in patent infringement lawsuits in 2011.
Patent trolls -- also known as Patent Assertion Entities ("PAEs") -- are "firms with a busines
