This Week in iPhone News – July 17/2009
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Analyzing the App Store Paid Games Chart There may not be as many 99-cent titles on the App Store as one would think.
Wildy Successful iPhone App Store A review of the App Store’s first year.
Game Zichermann, CEO and Co-Founder of beamME An interview with a developer of iPhone enterprise and business application.
iStat Remotely monitor your Mac, Linux, and Solaris machines from your iPhone.
iPhone 3.0 Video Showcase Akamai showcases video streams playable with the iPhone 3.0 OS using the Live HTTP Streaming protocol.
GDC Austin’s iPhone Games Summit Speakers First speakers announced for this year’s GDC in Austin, TX.
How to Fix Expired iPhone Developer Certificates A handy tip to on how to use the Provisioning Assistant on the Apple Developer Portal.
Apple iPhone App Store Stats More numbers to crunch with regards to the App Store.
How to Get Your App Noticed Information on a new eBook about how to market your next iPhone application.
VOX 3000 Speech Synthesis for iPhone and iPod Touch A cool new application from Retronyms if you’re into retro speech synthesizers.
App Store Hits 1.5 Billion Downloads Some thoughts on how the App Store grew to be so popular so quickly.
iPhone Development Emergency Guide A great guide for a developer new to the iPhone.
Intelligent Object Recognition The iPhone and how it can be used to augment reality.
Fighting Back Against the App Store’s Negative Rating Bias Ways to combat the natural tendency for users to rate your application negatively.
Staying Afloat in a Sea of iPhone Apps Some ways you can make your application stand out amongst the crowd on the App Store.
iPhone Developer Legal Guide A document that covers some important intellectual property issues for iPhone developers.
EA Announces Micro-Studio “8lb. Gorilla” Does the new micro-studio from EA live up to its reputation?
10 Tips to Help Conserve iPhone Battery Life
iPhone 3.0 Location Aware Google Search via Safari Safari can now access your location help filter your search results.
WWDC 2009 iPhone Developer Sessions Now Available from Apple Miss a session at this year’s WWDC? Have no fear as they are now available online (for a price).
IANAL*, but that “iPhone Developer Legal Guide” sited above seem a bit out of date and incomplete.
He misses some key issues with respect to the SDK terms that affect the use of FOSS such as dynamic linking vs static linking and the implications for derivative works using GPL and LGPL licensed software libraries.
Another example is the author states, “…Apple provides developers with no pre-made tools or mechanisms for creating or displaying your own terms and conditions to end users before, during, or immediately after the purchase process.” This is not currently true. iTunes Connect provides an elaborate mechanism to provide country-specific EULAs. Plus Apple provides a default standard EULA that all apps are subject to in the case of no specific EULA.
https://www.apple.com/legal/itunes/appstore/dev/stdeula/
There’s also absolutely no mention of the legal status of your relationship with Apple as an independent software developer submitting product for Apple to sell through the App Store. (In the US Apple pays you as if you are a contractor using a W-9 to declare income, but the goods are sold as your copyrighted product and Apple is an agent collecting an approximate 30% commission. The implication is that you are liable for any uncollected sales or use taxes. etc.) These are import legal issues that are completely unaddressed in this “Legal Guide”.
There also no mention about the legal implications of selling software into international markets.
The “Legal Guide” completely skips any mention of copyright which is the legal basis for selling software through the App Store. He does reasonably counsel that you should exercise extreme caution with respect to included IP content such as images, video and sound. But he doesn’t say anything about linked content. Also no mention is made of potential patent violations, such as those surrounding the use of MP3s through the internet.
In the end, if you’re looking for legal guidance for independently developing software for the App Store you will need to look much further than this document. Of course, that’s the point of the document. But the only legal resource provided in the “Guide” is a link back to the author’s law firm.
I would suggest developers look for a more thorough examination of the legal aspects of independent software development before they start incurring “billable hours”.
Good books on the subject I’ve read include:
– The Entrepreneur’s Guide to Patents, Copyrights, Trademarks, Trade Secrets & Licensing by Jill Gilbert (Berkley Trade)
– Legal Guide to Web & Software Development by Stephen Fishman (Nolo Press)
– Small Time Operator by Bernard B. Kamoroff (Bell Springs Publishing)
* I am not a lawyer
Hi everyone,
I must commend the commenter above (RichardL) on a very thorough and thoughtful review of the legal guide I published. I wanted to address some of the criticisms with a reply.
First, I had hoped that my guide made it clear that it was intended to be only a starting point for examining some of the more common legal issues of relevant to iPhone developers. Further, I limited myself to commenting only on IP-related issues, since that is my area of specialty. I tried to make these limitations clear in my guide, though I will give this some extra consideration in the next rev. To be sure, there are dozens and dozens of issues of relevance to anyone operating a software business — tax, corporate, employment, etc., etc. And, of course, there are dozens of issues just dealing with intellectual property. What I attempted to do in my legal guide was touch on the IP issues that were most common and most critical to the largest number of developers. I hope I did not lead anyone to believe that reading my guide would somehow be comprehensive of all of the potential legal issues of relevance to a software developer. My experience is that the iPhone app store is populated largely by apps whose developers have not really considered any IP legal issues, so I asked myself which issues I would raise if I was speaking to that crowd — that is what is in the guide. Over time, I will absolutely consider any comments I receive in deciding on what should be added to the guide for further revisions.
With regard to the issue of EULAs for iPhone apps, I must admit that I was indeed working from some dated information — Apple does currently allow developers a facility for including a EULA when they submit their apps, which was not previously the case. I am amending the guide to include this corrected information, as well as some other refinements and additions.
I do hope in the near future to offer some additional articles on advanced IP issues, including derivative works in the context of Objective-C, apps based on earlier programs, patent issues, and advanced licensing issues. If anyone has additional suggestions for topics they’d like to see written about, I’d be happy receive an e-mail.
Regards,
Miguel Danielson
Thanks Miguel. Much appreciated update.
I agree the App Store does seem a bit like the wild west with respect to IP issues.