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Ask HN: A competitor stole my iPhone app content — what should I do?
- jerguismi 17y agoFile a complaint to Apple, it may work.
- Padraig 17y agoI just sent a message through a general app questions in iTunesConnect... does anyone know of a specific Apple e-mail address for these kinds of issues?
- ConorWinders 17y agotry AppStoreNotices@apple.com that's where all of my C&Ds have come from :)
- alain94040 17y agoIf Apple follows the DMCA (and I'm sure they do), they must publish an official address at which copyright violations can be sent. So you shouldn't have to guess how/where to reach them. (but I'm too lazy to look for it myself)
- tjic 17y agoRaw data isn't copyrightable, at least here in the US. It is perfectly legal to go through a phone book and copy it.
- ig1 17y agoDatabase schemas however are. I believe Ireland also has the concept of database copyright (of course this would mean the act of scraping the timetables from the Dublin bus service website was also illegal)
- nroach 17y agoThis isn't directly applicable to the OP, but since a lot of readers are in the US, I thought I'd go into a bit more detail. In the United States, compilations of data are protected by the Copyright statute. Specifically, any "collection and assembling of preexisting materials or of data that are selected in such a way that the resulting work as a whole constitutes an original work of authorship". The underlying data is not protectable, but the structure and method of assembly, once the data are incorporated is. In Feist vs. Rural Telephone (499 U.S. 340 (1991)), the Supreme Court looked at what level of originality is required for a compilation to be protectable. The Court held that a white pages phone directory that is just a listing of numbers in a geographical area is not sufficiently original to be protected. Basically, that kind of listing is just a recitation of existing facts in a logical order. An important quote from that case sets out the factors for courts to consider in deciding what degree of originality is sufficient: "The compilation author typically chooses which facts to include, in what order to place them, and how to arrange the collected data so that they may be used effectively by readers. These choices as to selection and arrangement, so long as they are made independently by the compiler and entail a minimal degree of creativity, are sufficiently original that Congress may protect such compilations through the copyright laws. " As is often the case in the law, it doesn't give you a black and white answer, but instead gives a series of guidelines to follow.
- swombat 17y agoActually, as far as I understand it, though a specific item of data is not copyrightable, the whole collection that you call a phone book is copyrightable. If I recall correctly, in fact, phone book producers usually include fake numbers in the phone book, so they can tell if you copied their version of the phone book, and sue you for it.
- mcherm 17y agoYour understanding is incorrect. In the US (which doesn't apply for this case!) the original case showing that the collection of data is NOT copyrightable was, in fact, a case about copying a phone book. See http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Feist_Publications_v._Rural_Telephone_Service http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Feist_Publications_v._Rural_Tel...
- bensummers 17y agoCheck out "Database rights". http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Database_right http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Database_right In the EU, while the data itself may not be copyrightable, the act of compiling it into a usable database makes the database defensible.
- sfall 17y agothats really neat
- dirtbox 17y agoAlso http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Directive_on_the_enforcement_of_intellectual_property_rights http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Directive_on_the_enforcement_of... You're pretty much covered and you won't have to pay a penny.
- xsmasher 17y agoIn that case the copyright belongs to Dublin Bus, doesn't it? In which case the author of this post may be the original violator.
- sfall 17y agoit's not that the information that is being stored but rather that the method and some user choices and UI are the same
- deleted 17y ago[deleted]
- andywar 17y agoI guess one obvious question is do you have permission from the Dublin Bus company to use their data yourself? From their T&Cs (http://www.dublinbus.ie/en/Legal/ http://www.dublinbus.ie/en/Legal/) ‘No part of this website may be copied, performed in public, broadcast or adapted without the prior written consent of Córas Iompair Éireann. All rights on this material are reserved.‘ Your own ‘scraping’ of the data is itself legally questionable.
- mahmud 17y agoThat doesn't justify others stealing from him though.
- ErrantX 17y agono, but it means he cant bring any action against the guy if he owns no IP on the content either. EDIT: except perhaps the database schema
- andywar 17y agoAnd without those IP permissions in place, in the form of written approval by the bus company to use their data, he risks opening one almighty can of worms…
- jcl 17y agoIANAL, but it is my understanding that you own the copyright on the modifications you make when creating a derivative work, regardless of whether or not the derivative work is itself a copyright violation.
- xsmasher 17y agoBut if the original work was a collection of facts that is not protected by copyright, then your derivative work might not be protected by copyright either. Lists of facts are not protected by copyright in the US.
- flashingpumpkin 17y agoObviously the guy knew that he's onto something shady. Why else would someone name an sqlite database .png2? Can't give you any legal advice though. I reckon you should go after what others recommend here.
- durana 17y agoMaybe he renamed the database that way so anyone trying to extract data from his app would have a harder time.
- deleted 17y ago[deleted]
- buro9 17y agoYou're in Europe, you are protected. The database is copyrighted whilst the data isn't itself copyrightable. It is when the act of compiling the data is non-trivial and you can show that the data has resulted from this process (which you appear to be able to given that you have used names and entered routes in a way specific to your process) that you are covered. I'd start off with talking to him. His website http://www.philipkirwan.ie/site/index.html http://www.philipkirwan.ie/site/index.html states that he's doing an undergrad at Dublin City University, which no doubt includes lessons in the social aspect of computing including Copyright, Patents and Data Protection, etc. My points: He will be well aware of copyright, and the institution really does not want to bring itself into disrepute as a result of the actions of their students. It would not do his study well at all to provable have stolen the work of someone else having been made very well aware of copyright during prior study. The question raised, "Is all of Philip Kirwin's work his own work?". And that for a university, and for Philip himself is a very big deal. So I'd simply appeal to his own sense of self-preservation in that if he has indeed (as it appears) taken the content from your work and passed it off as his own then he is playing with fire that will burn him far greater than just losing the right to sell one iPhone application. At this point, he's already potentially damaged his reputation through his actions, now it is up to him to determine whether he wants to salvage this or risk burning himself totally.
- andywar 17y agoExcept his own act of compiling is by ‘scraping’ the original source, against their own copyrights and T&Cs. In the case of a bus company’s timetable their own data—the times they run to, routes, etc.—is not public domain unless they release it as such. Both developers are equally at fault unless one or both has written permission to use the data in this manner.
- dantheman 17y agoTheir time tables are facts and you can't copyright a fact. Please don't express an opinion as a fact.
- deleted 17y ago
- haasted 17y agoMap makers often add a bit of erroneous information to their maps, which allows them to detect when competitors copy their data outright. A similar approach seems applicable to this kind of application.
- xinsight 17y agoGreat idea. If your competition gets his data from you, then you can leverage that position of power. First, you'll need to make sure you have the latest data. (If you're both updating with the Apple release cycle, then that will give you at least a week of lead time.) Second, a few booby traps in the data that your app knows to parse out will create angry customers for your competitor (after they wait or a bus that never comes) and you'll have "smoking gun" evidence that he's stealing your DB.
- gridspy 17y agoI love the exploding data idea.
- pclark 17y agotechcrunch europe would be all over this. You should reach out to Mike Butcher (@mikebutcher) and chat to him.
- medianama 17y agoI have observed most such issues get resolved after sending a threatening mail
- JunkDNA 17y agoI think once you have sent him a forceful note or two asking him to back off, I would probably drop it. If you want to try and drum up some publicity over it on some other blogs, you might be able to make some headway. But I wouldn't expend lots of energy on him. This sort of thing is akin to people who have their blogs stolen and mirrored by SEO sites using their RSS feeds. You can spend all infinte time and energy chasing after people like this. Alternatively, you can use that same time and energy making new apps and improving existing ones. I haven't looked at both apps, but I would venture to guess that someone who is cutting corners by stealing from other people is probably also not spending a whole lot of time on design, polish, and user experience. Those are things that are hard to copy effectively and a place where you can set yourself apart.
- Tichy 17y agoHaving dropped small things on occasion, I am not entirely sure anymore it is the right thing to do. Chances are, it will keep gnawing at you - maybe it is better to just fight for one's rights? It could also be good practice in case something bigger comes up eventually. Then you would already have established contacts with lawyers and what not. On the other hand, lawyers are costly and in the end might not be able to help. They are prone to suggesting the most expensive course of action, because they get a share of the worth of the case. At least in Germany.
- techiferous 17y ago"Chances are, it will keep gnawing at you - maybe it is better to just fight for one's rights?" There is a large opportunity cost here, since fighting could involve lawyers fees and lost time. I don't think assuaging "that gnawing feeling" is worth thousands of dollars. Learning to let go could be the more lucrative path.
- Tichy 17y agoI guess it can only be decided on an individual basis after all. I think there was a similar discussion here recently, about somebody breaking lose all hell because a company screwed him over 20$. On the one hand it didn't make sense, on the other hand society needs somebody to step up and make a stink, otherwise companies that rip us off small amounts of money would proliferate. I am not experienced with lawyers. It would be nice if it would be possible to just delegate this nasty stuff to somebody and forget about it (for a fixed fee?). I suppose rich people would just tell their secretaries to deal with it... Maybe some Indian company could step up and provide that service for cheap? Or would it work like that if you already had an established relationship with a lawyer you trust? First negotiations with lawyers seem painful.
- deleted 17y ago[deleted]
- anonjon 17y agoDo nothing? This isn't worth it. Spend your time/money making an application that isn't so easily duplicated. You said it yourself that you weren't planning to make a mint on this. No point in dealing with the hassle of lawyers, paying the lawyers etc. If you only had one competitor, it would be possible, but being that you have five competitors, and some of them are free, I'd have to say that the market is saturated and its time to get out anyway.
- Eliezer 17y agoHe's certainly not worth trying to sue. But he's worth reporting to his school, publicly nailing to the wall, and the resulting story posted on one's website to discourage anyone thinking of ripping off future apps, if that can be done. Remember, the expectation of punishment for misdeeds like this is an expensive public good, those who maintain it are social altruists.
- cabalamat 17y agoAgreed. Philip Kirwan -- http://www.philipkirwan.ie/site/index.html http://www.philipkirwan.ie/site/index.html -- is clearly a dodgy person. I certainly wouldn't do business with him.
- pistoriusp 17y agoI don't understand - From the link you provided I can't tell if he's a dodgy person or not? Sure - He have the submitters story, but he hasn't provided us with evidence beyond a reasonable doubt that Philip has stolen his database.
- Padraig 17y agoYou can verify this for yourself, but it'll cost you the price of both apps: about $7. 1. Buy them, right click on both apps in your iTunes Apps list and choose 'Reveal in Finder'. 2. Copy both to your desktop. 3. Rename them to .zip and unzip them 4. Click on the app file and choose 'Show Package Contents' 5. Compare dublinbus.db with dublinbus.png2 They are not totally identical, but there is a very significant overlap that cannot be down to chance. Also, his e-mail to me admits that he copied my 'layout'. Though, I agree that his website doesn't him look 'dodgy' by itself.
- stevoo 17y agoBasicly you should have done this from the start. Since you know that you will not have a profit , why didnt you add the app free and add commercials to it. That way yours will be free and there will be no need for anyone to copy it and at the same time have some profit from ads.
- viae 17y agoDon't waste your time on legal action on this iphone app. Yes, notify Apple and publicize it. But, your energy is better spent innovating and hacking. While screen-scraping is hard work it doesn't bring success and other good programmers can re-implement your work without stealing it. Hell, this might be a good opportunity to open source your screen scraper. Publicize it so that others will collaborate on improving it. Then you can focus on more interesting work. Data gathering is hard work, more people doing it make it easier. What can you do with your app that isn't so easily stolen (and reproduced) and turned into a carbon copy? As you've already seen, public transit apps are a dime a dozen. How about a bigger/better itinerary application that includes trains, planes, and automobile times so that one can put an itinerary together of vacation travel across all of Ireland? Add hotel info, confirmation info, etc, etc, etc... I don't have the links handy put there have been other articles on HN about lessons from stolen work. Big lesson: it rarely matters because the people stealing ideas and work don't have the skillset to do it themselves. In the long term they can't compete with the new features and directions that you'll go. What I'm trying to say is, use that energy from your anger to create something fcking awesome that that stupid muppet won't be able to compete with. * I'm from the US. Yesterday, I learned about the use of the word muppet over on that side of the pond. BRILLIANT!
- Padraig 17y agoThanks, I appreciate that. I'm not sure that it's as clear cut as doing something that can't be easily copied — any iPhone app that stores data locally is vulnerable to this. (In fact, I'd advise other iPhone developers reading this to have a close look at any suspicious competitors). I'm cool with someone 'stealing the idea', just not when they go selling my implementation of it.
- ericd 17y agoI guess his point is to make your new competitive advantage something that isn't easily copied - instead of a data advantage, go for a feature advantage. He doesn't have access to your source code, so he'd have to do real work to make a competitor. But I feel for you. I definitely think you should tell/threaten to tell his school if he doesn't take it off the app store.
- gabrielroth 17y agoIn future versions you might include made-up data for a nonexistent bus line, in the same way that cartography companies include nonexistent streets on maps. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Trap_street http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Trap_street
- thinkbohemian 17y agoArtistic works have a "natural" copyright. (in the united states anyway). You could potentially argue that the schema of your database was a geeky but artistic work. (Layout of data structure, naming of tables etc.) or maybe some other feature of your app. Anyone with some legal background agree, disagree??
- blantonl 17y agoI think a lot of folks are missing the point of this blog post, and that is the App Store ecosystem has turned into the wild-wild west of development. I've never seen anything like how bad it has gotten. In my case, I run a Web services platform that approximately 10 or so iPhone app developers have licensed and coded applications to. In the beginning, there was only one app that used our services and it became a top-10 paid app. Within weeks I found there were 6 or so apps that sprouted up in the App Store with similar names, exact functionality, yet they were not licensed to use our API and content. The common thread? They stole the original app's SQLite database, repackaged the interface, and off they went. We blocked these apps from using our platform until they were licensed, but to this day I weekly see apps sprout up that are following the same nefarious business practice. They steal content from a popular innovative app, repackage as their own, and throw it to the masses for the quick buck. It is disgusting ecosystem. I'd be willing to bet that 80% of the app store content and market is teams stealing and repackaging the 20% of actual true innovation that is occurring.
- wmeredith 17y agoThis sounds like most markets to me. (Not passing judgement one way or the other; it is what it is.)
- rbanffy 17y ago"I've never seen anything like how bad it has gotten." Ever tried to make money with off-the-shelf software in the early 80's? ;-) Well... At least, at that time, they had to swap floppies.
- Luyt 17y agoHave you considered encrypting your database, so that only your app can make sense of it? That's what a friend of mine used to do, and it indeed stopped some superficial copying.
- Padraig 17y agoGood idea — well.. good advice for next time, anyway.
- nudded 17y agoput false values in it yourself, if you notice them in the other app then he copied your database
- angelbob 17y agoAmusingly, (old-school, paper) mapmakers would do this, partly to defend against these problems.
- natch 17y agoAdd a new feature that uses new data, and encrypt that data. Not an insurmountable obstacle, but it will put you ahead of him in the comparisons on the app store as long as you can stay ahead. But he can do the same thing to you. In the end, the users win. That's the beauty of a platform that has critical mass in numbers of developers competing to make good apps. Sucks for you (us) unless you look at it as a fun challenge.
- rbanffy 17y agoA better solution would be hosting it online and then caching it on the client. With the added benefit of bring able to tell when someone else accesses your content by failing to supply a special request header. I would start by trying to talk to him. If that didn't work, I would call his school and make them aware of their student's shady doings. Then I would go to Apple and point out Apple is helping this guy to infringe on your copyright (the database is comprised of public data, but your work compiling it is non-trivial). If the data were kept on-line and cached in the client, you could, as a final step of escalation, render his app useless. Or worse: make it supply wrong routes.
- Nassrat 17y agoCheers mate, you got ripped off, that's why I embrace open source. You should only blame yourself though, you could have had a simple crypt on the db, with a key stored inside the binary. At least it would take a bit more work to rip you off. I would suggest you go ahead and release your database to the public. The one thing you have that they do not is that you still have your scraper script(s). If it was me, I would create a (restful) web service that allows anyone to utilize your data, moreover, allow people (maybe with a nominal fee) to download the entire database, or if you really wanna get into it, implement keys (kinda like google maps) to access you bus timetable api.
- dhume 17y agoYou should only blame yourself though, you could have had a simple crypt on the db, with a key stored inside the binary. At least it would take a bit more work to rip you off. Well, there's one I didn't expect to see on HN. A developer gets ripped off and told it's his fault for not including some form of DRM.
- acangiano 17y agoThis Philip Kirwan is a real class act: http://www.philipkirwan.ie/site/android.html http://www.philipkirwan.ie/site/android.html
- david 17y agoOne would hardly think the author of farty farty could stoop so low... also: look at the time of day on this screenshot: http://www.dublinbusapp.com/dbmaps/Dublin_Bus_Maps.html http://www.dublinbusapp.com/dbmaps/Dublin_Bus_Maps.html
- durana 17y agoDoes anyone know how iPhone apps are licensed? If this Philip guy bought the app and the database was included with it, are there any terms that say he can't do whatever he wants with the database (e.g., use it for his own app)?
- orblivion 17y agoMaybe avoid getting law involved and see if Apple has a way to arbitrate this sort of thing?
- nym 17y agoThe guy's twitter handle is @fluter, as http://twitter.com/fluter http://twitter.com/fluter ... hope he shares light on his side of the story. Also I'd like to see a diff on the databases.
- Tichy 17y agoI discovered today that I have a similar problem, even though I don't even have an iPhone app: someone copied graphics from my web site for his iPhone app. So far I have contacted apple and the designer of the graphics to clarify the rights (designers provided the graphics but I don't know where they are from). Not thrilled, but I can't imagine just letting that person get away with it. Although what the other comment said certainly applies: the quality of the ripped off app seems rather low. He uses some of my icons, but the rest of it looks ugly. Anyway, would be curious to hear how your story unfolds.
- Padraig 17y agoWe worked it out: http://padraig.tumblr.com/post/355936709/resolved http://padraig.tumblr.com/post/355936709/resolved