Apple goes to extraordinary lengths to protect its intellectual property and its image.
One notable case was the tiny company that made parody dolls of Steve Jobs and the Cupertino company was able to get the dolls withdrawn from sale at the click of a legal finger.
It’s not just the little’s guys that Apple goes out for – they’re currently at legal loggerheads with Samsung, Amazon, HTC and now Greg Hughes.
Greg Hughes? Yes. Greg is a UK-based Apple fan, iOS developer and inventor of the well-known Synch app.
Well he’s maybe not well known, but if you Apple jailbreak user you may have come across his app which allows you synch your iDevice without using a USB.
Hughes submitted the app to the iTunes approval team for inclusion on the iTune app store. But, as many had thought, it was rejected.
Apple’s team of minions explained they liked the app and Hughes’ work, and thought he was onto something good. But couldn’t accept the app because contravened one or more of Apple’s app rules.
Apple did however ask Mr Hughes to drop them his CV over as they were that impressed. He then decided to submit the app to the Cydia Store a place to download apps, for jail broken iPhones, that don’t make it onto the normal app store.
Then app became a massive success and sold over 50,000 units for ten dollars a pop and he seemingly made a decent chunk on money from the venture.
Fast forward to Monday and Apple announces the new ability to synch your phone over Wi-Fi. Same functionality, same name and rather cheekily the same icon the Mr Hughes has designed.
Apple will no doubt say that it was planning to add wireless syncing to to iOS all along, and that the name Wi-Fi Sync is the obvious choice, and that the logo was designed using standard icon conventions based on Apple design cues, but all the same.
Apple knows that one lonely student will never be able to take on the might of its legal department and can pretty much ride roughshod over the law, especially when the app was developed using tools and APIs it owns.