11 ms·
Oh my god, they don't even bother implementing the app any more... It reminds me of my first App Store experience. I made an app that was somewhat successful (
by yarcob 6y ago
Oh my god, they don't even bother implementing the app any more...
It reminds me of my first App Store experience. I made an app that was somewhat successful (about 2000€ a month, enough to pay for a students living expenses).
Within short time, a chinese speaking developer cloned it. They copied the icon (slighlty different color), they copied the UI, they even copied all the text in the dialog boxes. They released the app with a slightly different name.
I contacted Apple to complain about the obvious copyright infringement, but they only forwarded my complaint to the developer. Interestingly enough, the developer actually replied to me. They sent an email threating legal action. I asked them to at least change the icon, and they did. But until today, the rest of the cloned app is still on the app store and competes with my app.
It's not comparable to your case, since in my case the competitor wasn't a scammer, just someone with a very lose interpretation of intellectual property.
But it makes me feel that Apple really doesn't give a shit what goes on in their store, as long as they make their 30%. (or 15% from small fish like me now)
- lisp-fan-007 6y agoSorry for your experience. Its a very difficult situation. However the issue is if Apple takes a view, they open themselves up to legal risk - they are not the court so its not their place to determine copyright infrigement. Rather, if you get a court order stating infringement, then Apple has to take down the offending app. Whilst yours may be a clear cut case, it is not too difficult to think of examples where it is not copyright infringement or is very difficult to prove - is Signal an infrigement of Whatsapp? I don't think Apple could have done anything differently, to some extent it is your word vs. theirs and the right medium to settle the dispute is the legal system, not Apple.
- gman83 6y agoIt's literally against the terms of service, so they could remove it for that reason: https://developer.apple.com/app-store/review/guidelines/#copycats https://developer.apple.com/app-store/review/guidelines/#cop...
- coldtea 6y agoAnd how would they know it's one or the other party that violated the terms? "Because our app was posted first" is not enough.
- solarengineer 6y ago“Because our app was posted first” is actually what I thought of. Could you explain why this isn’t enough?
- mwexler 6y agoYou post screenshots of your app in progress for feedback. Scammer dupes those, rushes app into store, and when you finally launch, they "were there first" and requests your deletion on those grounds. So, I suspect Apple just wants to stay out of it, let courts decide based on a collection of evidence (and whomever has the money to pay for lawyers, and time to do all the proceedings), and profit no matter who wins.
- _qulr 6y ago> You post screenshots of your app in progress for feedback. Scammer dupes those, rushes app into store, and when you finally launch, they "were there first" and requests your deletion on those grounds. I seriously doubt this has ever happened in the history of the App Store. Scammers are "lazy". The look for the easy targets. Copying an existing app is easier and more lucrative than trying to write a new app based just on some in-progress screenshots, as if scammers would even be paying attention to you before you published an app.
- coldtea 6y ago>I seriously doubt this has ever happened in the history of the App Store. Don't know about the App Store, but people have copied in-progress websites and did copy-cat products (sometimes complete with the original artwork/styles).
- hmottestad 6y agoYoutube auto DMCA anyone?
- Abhinav2000 6y agoI think the difference there is that they have established copyright - have you done so with your App when there is a potential dispute? Also a movie or song is a lot easier to determine copyright infringement. But a program might be harder due to its complexities. But this is just my thoughts, I'm no expert AT ALL.
- orasis 6y agoYou can submit a DMCA takedown request for them copying any of your images or text. I have successfully done this on Google Play.
- Hamuko 6y agoCan you submit a DMCA request if you're not American?
- fxtentacle 6y agoYes. But the recipient company needs to be American.
- billpg 6y agoIn this case, isn't the recipient company Apple?
- exikyut 6y agoNo, and that's where/why the whole "service provider" thing can get interesting. In this case Apple just hands your DMCA notice to the alleged infringer.
- codys 6y agoApple is hosting user created content though (in the form of apps). Don't they become liable for that hosting if they don't handle the DMCA request themselves?
- fxtentacle 6y agoYes, in this case Apple would be the recipient. And even though they did not create the infringing app, the DMCA take-down forces them to block access to it. In effect, you'd be triggering the same sequence that led to youtube-dl being blocked on GitHub for a while. Surely, GitHub = Microsoft didn't build it, but they still had to block access when the RIAA sent a DMCA. In the youtube-dl case, the DMCA notice was later found to be fraudulent and thus the access was restored. But if the infringing app re-uses images verbatim, that won't happen so it stays offline.
- Jnr 6y agoYou can go the DMCA route, they will probably take it down.
- pjc50 6y agoFortunately making an app that does the same thing as an existing app isn't copyright infringement - that would be far worse than the Amazon "one click" patent, as there would only be one company allowed to make a web browser, word processor, spreadsheet, etc.
- arrrg 6y agoCopying texts is potentially copyright infringement, though.
- xwdv 6y agoThen enforce your copyright. No one will do it for you.
- function_seven 6y agoWould be nice if the company taking 30% of my sales would offer some assistance.
- bryanrasmussen 6y agoI suppose you could do a DMCA takedown? but that would really seem like using a morally compromised solution for good, as opposed to the more normal using morally neutral solutions for good.
- jiofih 6y agoWhat would be the morally compromised part? He owns the copyright.
- bryanrasmussen 6y agoyes, that is doing it for good, the morally compromised part is that the DMCA is a solution created to allow big content owners to shut down whoever they want without any culpability. Most often things are morally neutral, and can be used for good or bad, some things are morally bad and it is difficult to use them for morally good things, and some things are morally good and it is difficult to use for morally bad. But most things are morally neutral. I think the DMCA is morally bad, but here he can use it for a moral good. But even when you use a morally bad thing for good it is still slightly bad, as in people could point at his usage here (if he chose to use it) and say "see the DMCA isn't bad" and the benefit for the bad solution his good usage promotes would taint his good usage ever so slightly. As I tend to be more of a pragmatist I would say use the DMCA takedown if possible, but I can understand someone else feeling that would be bad.
- ChuckNorris89 6y ago>about 2000€ a month, enough to pay for a students living expenses Just out of pure curiosity, where did you live/study that 2000 Euros are student living expenses? In my neck of the woods in central-western Europe (Austria), 1000 Euros per month is already really good money for most students and 2000 is what you make as a junior full time employee in a good tech company.
- Macha 6y agoStudent accommodation in some capitals is above €1000/month if you don't opt for a shared room
- cfontes 6y agoTry Amsterdam, for example. €1000 is your rent.
- heeen2 6y agoFor a room or a whole apartment?
- jack_pp 6y agoRooms range from 500 to 800 in amsterdam, I just checked the facebook group and the first post is student housing available for 317 euros.
- kergonath 6y agoThe usual course of action is flat sharing. Rent is then a bit more reasonable. In London you could find rooms from a few hundred quid pcm, then depending on location the sky is the limit. That was the most expensive city in Europe, pre-Brexit.
- deleted 6y ago[deleted]
- andix 6y ago
- majewsky 6y agoI'm entirely sympathetic with your situation, yet I cannot stop thinking "that's just capitalism working normally".
- thisarticle 6y agoThat’s nonsense, even the US has trademark laws. They wholesale ripped off parent’s app.
- exikyut 6y ago[Posting here on the assumption the parent comment will likely stay at the top] What about... a service, that helps walk you through these kinds of situations, handles country-specific implementation details, can help figure out the best approach for a given scenario, and give you the best chance of getting things sorted out... ...and... ...is NOT a "welcome, welcome, one and all" type of environment, and requires Twitter, GitHub, an HN profile, proof of long-term domain registration (eg, Internet Archive history) - the kinds of things that would be infuriatingly difficult for a scammer to successfully clone? HN is absolutely big enough that "the HN crowd" would use something like this. In fact, a service like this could theoretically develop working relationships with contacts inside Apple and Google, build a history/reputation of forwarding accurate, high-signal issues, and maybe help to mitigate the current mess of "problem must attract 10K views to be fixed".
- boplicity 6y agoThat sounds suspiciously like a "union rep."
- shawnz 6y agoMaybe an "app store developers union" wouldn't be such a terrible idea
- jessaustin 6y agoYeah I'm sure Apple would love this idea and wouldn't try to penalize union developers in the least...
- matheusmoreira 6y agoIt's not illegal to create an app that does the same thing as another app. Method of operation is explicitly not protected by copyright. Copying your icons and text could very well be illegal. Still, threatening legal action against the people they plagiarized? The audacity of this chinese...
- echelon 6y agoWould you support antitrust action against Apple forcing them to open up the app store? Would you be willing to speak about your experience and the total apathy you received from Apple?
- zepto 6y agoOpening up the App Store seems like it would make this problem completely intractable forever, rather than just bad as it is now. At least Apple can be pressured to get better on this. Once you have multiple app stores, the game is over forever in terms of protecting apps from duplication.
- antihero 6y agoCould you have use a DMCA request if they used copyrighted content?
- ta1234567890 6y agoThis is the case with pretty much every Marketplace out there. Same thing happens with Amazon and same thing happens with Airbnb as well. What a Marketplace cares the most about is maximizing transactions. Hence, they care about having plenty of vendors and showing good reviews for those vendors so that people will buy. They really don’t want to police vendors too much because that means reducing offer and transactions.
- chrischen 6y agoWow something similar happened to my business. A fly-by-night business launched under my trademark, bought Google search ads against my domain searches, copied verbatim content from my website including my terms of service which has my address and company name in it, and then also sent me a cease an desist on my own trademark to top it off. Despite such egregious infractions it's incredibly difficult to stop them because their costs for doing this is near nothing. Their risks for doing this are also near nothing (since there's not really any criminal liability). Unfortunately the US legal system doesn't really work that well for small players. If anything platforms are probably in a better position to enforce things better than the government, but they aren't really doing so. Amazon is also turning a blind eye to scams since at the end of the day all money still flows to them.