I'm on the fence with patents... overall I think the response by Lodsys is reasonable and if their license fees are as the article states, then it should not be to much of a burden to developers.
My guess is Apple financially works out something with Lodsys so all iOS apps are extended a license.
If I was AT&T looking for unauthorized tethering folk, I'd focus on the people that are using > 2 GB a month + other various heuristics. Something deff smells funny if someone is using substantial bandwidth and much of the traffic is with a UserAgent like Firefox or Chrome