First off; I'm not a qualified legal advisor, so my views here are from my experience of matters like this and should not be construed as solid legal advice.
As long as you've not used their code or other files from the app your first step should be to go back to them and say the app is not derived from their application and all materials used in the application have been created by, or appropriately licensed by, your company for use in your application. You should also ask them the jurisdiction under which they are making these claims and for specific examples of where they have found materials have been taken from their application and incorporated into yours, or where they believe trademark infringement has taken place. In all the jurisdictions I'm aware of to breach copyright you must have either taken something from their app, or created an exact duplicate of it to the extent that the two can not be told apart by the average person. In terms of trademarks, well, trademarks are registered with different agencies around the world, and what's considered a legitimate trademark in one region isn't for another (e.g. currently Android isn't a registered trademark of Google in Europe, but is a Google registered trademark in the US), so it can be pretty complex, but unless they have specific examples it sounds like they're just trying to clear the market of any competition so they can make as much money as they can. There was a spate of "Look and Feel" lawsuits in the 80's which fell flat on their face (you can see a bit about it at http://www.oreillynet.com/onlamp/blog/2003/12/the_revival_of_the_lookandfeel.html ). The main thing to remember though, is if you're in any doubt contact a qualified legal advisor. Al. -- * Looking for Android Apps? - Try http://andappstore.com/ * ====== Funky Android Limited is registered in England & Wales with the company number 6741909. The views expressed in this email are those of the author and not necessarily those of Funky Android Limited, it's associates, or it's subsidiaries. On Mar 22, 12:24 am, Richard <rtaylor...@googlemail.com> wrote: > Hi everyone, > > I'm the developer of a game, Flying Aces, that was released last > September. > > It's a simple line drawing game, of which there are now several > variations on a similar theme. > > There is a very popular iPhone game, Flight Control, that is one of > the most popular (over 2 million sales) developed by Firemint. > > Firemint, according to their website, are porting their Flight Control > game to Android very soon. > > I was contacted last week, with this email:http://stickycoding.com/fa1.pdf > > I promptly replied, asking whether it was some kind of joke, and asked > whether they are accusing me of using any of their graphics/audio/ > resources (which I do not). > > I got this response today:http://stickycoding.com/fa2.pdf > > They appear to be demanding (they haven't explicitly mentioned, but > I'm sure they will mention legal proceedings in their next reply) that > I stop selling my game, because it is vaguely similar to theirs. Now, > yes, you land planes by dragging a path, but that's the line-drawing > genre. And mentioning similar things such as "helicopter landing site > with a big H". > > Does anyone have any opinions on this matter? I'm assuming they have > contacted developers of similar apps (Flight Director is very similar > to my game, and is more popular, I would assume they were contacted > first) so I've emailed them to see. > > I don't take to kindly to larger businesses trying to nudge indie devs > like myself out of the way to create a monopoly for there game before > it is even published. > > I know this isn't a programming question but, I figured it applies to > many developers like myself, and there isn't much in the way of advice > other than on here. -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "Android Developers" group. To post to this group, send email to android-developers@googlegroups.com To unsubscribe from this group, send email to android-developers+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com For more options, visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/android-developers?hl=en To unsubscribe from this group, send email to android-developers+unsubscribegooglegroups.com or reply to this email with the words "REMOVE ME" as the subject.
