Publishing applications on apple store [closed]

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I have 2 questions regarding to Apple App Store.

1. I see many people mimicking applications and publishing them in the Apple App Store. Isn't this plagiarism and shouldn't this be sued? One obvious example would be the numerous apps copied from flappy birds.

2. Can you publish applications on U.S. Apple App Store if you're abroad? Or do you only get to publish on the Apple App Store you are currently living?

Answer 1

For the first question it is very interesting topic.

People tend to mimic games/apps when a specific app becomes so famous. In order to go to law against those copycats the respective person has to register himself of respective copyright trademarks which involves a lot of money for lawyer and copyright claims. Some hit games/apps are developed by indie developers who does not have that much money to invest in these trademarks. Taking this advantage, some devs are really smart that they see whether the creator comes from a big company if not they start to create copies and upload to appstore.

Mostly this can be sued if you have the proof. That is the code. Since you do not have proof that the copycat is using your code you cannot sue them. The other part is the images. If you find any of your app is using the images that you have created then you have the proof you can start suing them.

So how to stop this. If the app really got that famous then the creator can file a complaint to apple about the copycats and if he provides some necessary data then apple will consider removing the app.

Also if you want your app to be so different than the copycats then update your with app with lot features constantly(Which is see in Tiny Wings and Temple Run where the second version of it is way better than the copycats).

Another fact is According to apple review guidelines

2.11 Apps that duplicate Apps already in the App Store may be rejected

I did have the same question and I started to google about this and found some knowledge which i shed here. You would get more insights if you google it.

For the second question the simple answer is YES and you can choose the countries you want to upload the app.