In other words, if you accepted the offer, you'd end up paying Lodsys $100 for roughly every $17,000 that you make. I'd guess you could count on one hand the number of devs that will ever be on the hook for more money than a good iOS consultant could make by booking a single day's worth of work, which is at the very least the amount of time that will be spent figuring out what the hell to do to fight against something like this if you end up taking it to court even before legal fees (unless you happen to be an expert on patent law to begin with).
"Lodsys needs developers to think it is cheaper to settle than it is to fight."
Well, it is probably cheaper if you include lost time, even if you win in court, and that's the whole problem - as a pure business decision, it's a no-brainer, especially when you consider the stress of being sued and having to think about this garbage when you'd rather be coding...
I only hope that the publicity of this crap means that enough people are pissed off to fight it at a loss instead of paying up, and they make Lodsys lose money on this tactic overall.
But I worry, I worry...