That analysis looks wrong to me -- Adam Engst claims that the developers can't settle with Lodsys because it would "affect Apple's rights or bind Apple in any way". That's wrong. Lodsys isn't claiming anything against Apple's rights -- they are claiming the developer's "buy now" button violates their patent, and there's no reason why the developer and Lodsys can't settle this between them, without it affecting Apple's rights or binding Apple at all.

I think it's an absolute bullshit patent and I hope everyone vigorously fights it, but there's no reason why developers can't settle, if they feel they should.

I'd love to see Apple indemnify developers, too, but that would probably create as big a headache for Apple as this situation will.

I think what he is saying is that the agreement with Apple says we can't form legal agreements that include Apple's SDK and APIs, which in app purchase is apart of. This could or could not be covered under those mechanisms.

You might be right. The way Lodsys is going after us is for the button (or something) that connects to the mechanism that performs the in app purchase. Either way, as everyone else here has pointed out, it really is a sticky widget.