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EFF Presses Apple To Indemnify Developers
Julie188 writes "The Electronic Frontier Foundation is calling on Apple to indemnify its developers from Lodsys — a patent troll that's alleging patent infringement on the in-app purchasing used by iOS apps. (That's the technology developed by Apple and forced on many of its developers.) The letters Lodsys has been sending out came to light on May 13th, and apparently developers have been asking Apple for help to no avail."
In this context I would like to strongly recommend this new mocoNews (paidContent.org) article entitled "Mobile Patent War On The Little Guy Demands Response From Apple". Tom Krazit explains very well what the business issues are, including that Apple itself sues over patents quite actively, especially against Android.
Apple does not withhold taxes in the US.
I filled out the US tax form. What will be my tax treaty withholding rate?
Apple does not withhold taxes from proceeds paid from sales on the U.S. Store. See the IRS website for more information about types of income subject to U.S. withholding tax and withholding rates under tax treaties.
Will Apple send a U.S. Tax Form 1099 for my sales?
No. Sales on the App Store are sales by you, the developer of copyrighted works, to end users. Therefore, Apple takes the position that payments made to you for these sales are payments for products or goods, which are specifically exempt from reporting on Form 1099 even though the payments may be taxable income to you.
You are responsible for determining your own tax obligations with respect to these payments. If you are uncertain of your tax obligations, we recommend that you consult with a tax professional.
You could argue that third party app developers are actually employees. You can also argue that wearing Nike shoes makes you a Nike employee.
Do you even lift?
These aren't the 'roids you're looking for.
Let's see what "ordinary diligence" means according to you, then:
1. You want people to try your software for free, then upgrade to a paying version.
2. You read the Apple developer documentation
3. You find the recommended way to provide this feature, literally documented by Apple, "you should do it this way".
4. You do a full patent review for this and any other silly little feature that your app uses, digging through hundreds of thousands of patents or paying some company tens of thousands of dollars to do this for you, fully aware that you are STILL not sure you aren't violating any unpublished patents.
5. You decide not to release the software since there are way too many applicable patents about the simplest and most obvious little features that really shouldn't be patentable but have been patented nevertheless.
So basically, what you are saying is that everybody should just stop developing software. That's just ordinary diligence.