Apple bans iPhone developer, yanks 900+ apps

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Apple bans iPhone developer, yanks 900+ apps

Apple has banned an iPhone developer responsible for over 900 apps for repeated complaints of copyright infringement. Khalid Shaikh has seen his iPhone Developer Program License Agreement and Registered iPhone Developer Agreement terminated by Apple, who told Shaikh in its rejection email that it has “informed you of numerous third party intellectual property complaints concerning over 100 of your Applications and reminded you of your obligations to obtain the necessary rights prior to submission of your Applications. Nevertheless, we continue to receive the same or similar types of complaints regarding your Applications despite our repeated notices to you. The persistent nature of such complaints has led us to conclude that you are entering into the representations and warranties in the iDP Agreement in bad faith by misrepresenting that you have all the necessary rights for your submissions.”

MobileCrunch reports that Shaikh’s 9-month-old company, Perfect Acumen, had a team of 26 developers and had managed to publish 943 applications, or an average of 5 apps a day, every day, for 250 days. Many of the company’s apps were serialized in nature and sold for $5 each, such as “Top Sexy Ladies,” “Top Sexy Men,” and a vast number of news update applications. The report also notes that competing developer Brighthouse Labs has released over 2,000 applications, each costing $0.99, many of which seem to have similar copyright issues as Shaikh’s apps.

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Comments

1

Good for Apple. I’m glad to see them yank this kind of “noise” from the app store. Way to keep it tidy.

Posted by Bones on August 4, 2009 at 6:41 AM (PDT)

2

While, I’ll applaud apple for their yanking of a crummy app developer, questions need to be asked of the app approval process in the 1st place that allowed said 3rd party intellectual properties to slip through. If the app approval process was less of a free for all and so random at times we’d have a cleaner app store and these bannings would be unnecessary

Posted by Nykwil on August 4, 2009 at 6:53 AM (PDT)

3

This is great! I for one am really sick of seeing such crapware in the app store- it’s almost as bad as software for Windows! In the beginning, the only apps available were well made and stylish. Today, we have junky applications made by people just looking to make a quick buck, rather than enhance the iPhone experience. Personally, I’m glad they were able to kick this dev out. I hope the same happens to the Brighthouse Labs.

Posted by Josh C. on August 4, 2009 at 7:20 AM (PDT)

4

Kudos to Apple for once. Now they just need to boot Brighthouse Labs as well.

Really, now that OS 3.0 supports in-app purchases, I wish they’d enforce this on all serial app publishers. Instead of selling 500+ eBook apps that are all essentially the same reader with different content- instead force the dev to publish 1 reader and then sell the 500 different sets of content via in-app purchase. This would also go along way to reducing AppStore clutter.

Posted by Dyvim on August 4, 2009 at 7:37 AM (PDT)

5

thank goodness. that guy was a serial App Store spammer. his crap won’t be missed much. @Dyvim: i agree with your thoughts; now that Apple has in-app purchasing made easy there’s no reason for zillions of standalone e-books.

Posted by Toxic Boy on August 4, 2009 at 7:54 AM (PDT)

6

Now can we just get rid of all the juvenile flatulence apps? Even one is too many.

Posted by zyzyzyzyzyzyx on August 4, 2009 at 8:24 AM (PDT)

7

Of course, making the books an ‘in-app’ purchase effectively doubles the cost of the first book you buy, because Apple won’t let you give away a free app that supports in-app purchasing.

Posted by dave on August 4, 2009 at 11:13 AM (PDT)

8

I noticed this developer the other day when I was reading one of their product descriptions and saw how they were seeding them with words that didn’t pertain at all to the words I was actually searching for. I don’t understand why an app with a description like that wouldn’t be rejected in the first place for being inaccurate.

Posted by DustoMan on August 4, 2009 at 2:17 PM (PDT)

9

#7…the way around that is to make your e-books cost $1, but when you purchase the reader, you get your first book free…it’s a backdoor way of making a “free” app, but it circumvents Apple’s in-app purchase criteria.

Posted by Rob on August 5, 2009 at 10:36 AM (PDT)

10

I like the way you are thinking with this in app buying idea. It will defanately clean up some home screens out there as well.

Posted by AppleRash on August 5, 2009 at 2:32 PM (PDT)

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