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Comment by gcheong | Hacker News Reader

I really don't understand why Apple would decide to do this. It would seem to make more sense for Apple to tell the complainant to sue the competitor directly and get a court order to remove the app from the store.

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This is one of the big problems with the App store. If you develop for it, you are really at the mercy of Apple's decision process with regard to who can sell what in their store. It is their store, so they get to decide, but we as software developers need to decide if it is worth the risk for the potential reward you could see from having an app in their store. I personally am not developing for the app store because I do not like the decisions that I have seen Apple make.

This is one of the big problems with the App store. If you develop for it, you are really at the mercy of Apple's decision process

"Decision process?" I think you're really at the mercy of some mid-level manager or some clueless flunky.

If they have a "decision process" I would love to see the documentation they have on it, and the notes from this one!

Since apple have a 'review process', and the app store isn't a 'stuff gets put up, until it's taken down' deal, but a situation where apps have to be approved by apple's reviewers. Apple may well be legally liable for any infringing work that is sold on the app store, so taking a 'get a court order and take it up with the developer' MAY leave apple open to some liability of damages, whereas just yanking the app at the first sign of trouble will probably mitigate some of that.

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