A U.S. district judge threw out a motion filed by Apple (News - Alert) on behalf of independent developers against Lodsys, allowing the “patent troll” to continue to pursue litigation against smaller developers.

U.S. District Judge Rodney Gilstrap of East Texas dismissed Apple’s motion in the ongoing case, allowing Lodsys to file more suits against iOS developers. Lodsys holds patents that it says covers in-app purchasing, which it has used to sue small game developers for patent infringement.

Judge Gilstrap’s ruling allows Lodsys to go after an unlimited number of developers.

 Since the company does not produce any products by itself, it’s known to detractors as a “patent troll,” a company that buys up patents cheaply and then sues other companies for infringement.

Most of the time, the defendants end up settling out of court, not wanting to face a long and expensive legal battle. Opponents of this process claim that the patents are for obvious functions and that the actions of “patent assertion entities,” the formal term for these kinds of firms, amount to a “protection racket” against developers.

Apple originally filed a motion shielding iOS app developers with the East Texas court, which is a popular venue for patent trolls because it tends to side with patent holders. The company said it had already licensed the patents relating to in-app purchases, so Lodsys had no legal basis to go after individual app developers.

“Lodsys’ consistent practice has been to threaten and, if necessary to extract a payment, to sue large numbers of developers, to settle with most of them as quickly as possible, and then to dismiss or stay any claims that have not yet been settled by the time Apple's claims are ripe for decision,” the brief said.

In addition to the original small developers the company sued in 2011, it sued ten more in April of 2013, then five more, and another five in May.

Apple is not alone in its opposition to Lodsys’ actions. The Electronic Frontier Foundation filed an amicus brief with the court.

"Lodsys’ pattern of sending out demand letters, suing a seemingly random sampling of app developers and then settling with those app developers, promises that those developers’ claims of a right to use the technology in question will never be heard," EFF lawyer Daniel Nazer wrote in the brief. "The resulting uncertainty leaves developers in limbo. In fact, there have been reports that app developers are indeed pulling apps out of the U.S. markets entirely."