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Blatant Piracy in the App Store
NOTE: Apple has already resolved this by removing the offending apps. Thanks Apple!
(Seriously, I reported it over the weekend and got a note Monday morning from our partnership manager explaining that he had escalated the issue to his management. Upon checking the iTunes App Store, I saw that most of the offending apps were already gone.)
(an open letter to Apple Legal)
Dear Apple Legal:
We’ve discovered a number of counterfeit apps in the app store, all of which violate US Copyright law.
The developer is AicooSoft Co.,Ltd (developer ID 557881855).
AicooSoft has six apps in the store. Each of them is a direct, blatant rip-off of another successful app by another developer:
- iFileSharing is a counterfeit of Air Sharing
- FastSSH is a counterfeit of iSSH
- WEB2PDF Universal is a counterfeit of WEB²PDF
- VNC Remote Desktop is a counterfeit of Mocha VNC
- iDocs+ is a counterfeit of ReaddleDocs (documents/attachments viewer and file manager)
- iDrawStudio is a counterfeit of ArtStudio
AicooSoft has copied our various app descriptions verbatim, co-opted quotes about our apps from the press, and pasted screen shots of our apps pixel-for-pixel into their own screen shots.
I haven’t downloaded any of AicooSoft’s apps but I wouldn’t be surprised if they either don’t do anything at all or if they’ve just pirated our apps, maybe replaced an image asset or two, and then resigned with their developer ID.
Can you PLEASE remove all of these apps and ban this developer? This is the sort of offense you’re only supposed to find on Android. After all, we jump through a lot of app review hoops in an effort to ensure a quality, safe shopping experience in the App Store.
Thanks,
Dave at Avatron
(Yes, we reported this directly to Apple too. Just thought other developers and users might be interested.)
