I think Apple should defend developers. Particularly because they were the one's who enabled the feature and made the API accessible to developers. And considering how closed Apple is about iOS and some of their natives APIs, allowing this particularly feature to be released is a big deal.
> I would assume we would need more information about the license to know for sure.
Not necessarily. There are limitations on patents that prevent you as a patent holder from successfully suing the customers who buy widgets from me for patent infringement if I have a valid license for that patent from you.
In this case, since the Intellectual Ventures ("Lodsys") patents cover both client and server mechanisms, and Apple owns and makes the server side processes, and Apple has a valid license, the argument is that the same principle applies.
