2010 is turning out to be a bumpy year for Apple, whose domination of the smartphone market was further hampered earlier this summer by the company's poor handling of reactions to faulty iPhone 4 models. Now the electronics giant is facing criticism again, with reports spreading that it has been filing patents including artwork that appears identical to existing apps from third party developers.
As the image above shows, Apple's patent includes artwork describing a 'Where To?' app - which you'll see on the left - while the design on the right is an actual active 'Where To?' app...which has been available via the App Store - but not made by Apple - for nearly two years. Apple's design matches the existing app right down to the text and icon placement.
That's a point worth repeating: the app in question has been available since 2008, while Apple’s diagram accompaniments were made public on July 30, from a patent application that was filed in December 2009. It's worth noting that Apple's patent includes a description of a wider process, however, adding the loophole possibility that the company is using this and several other third-party apps related within the patent to describe a wider patent implementation. In other words, it's possible that the design could've been used just as a conceptual example.
'Where To?' app developer FutureTap are now faced with a troubling dilemma: "A situation where we’ve to fear that our primary business partner is trying to “steal” our idea and design. So how to deal with that?” It's a tough spot for a developer to be, for certain, and the debate has given rise to a storm of controversy among those who stand to be affected by similar circumstances.
It should be noted that the apps aren't identical to one another, despite appearance. 'Where to?' is a GPS-based application for finding nearby businesses and other points of interest. Alternately, Apple's application is intended for focus on travel services, and while it can utilize GPS for positioning purposes, it's not the main function of the application.
In an update to the FutureTap post, Ortwin Gentz notes that Apple's behavior, whether legal or not, raises serious questions that they've made no effort to explain. He quotes Brian Ford in saying:
"The real problem, as I see it, is that no one thought to approach FutureTap, and let them know that they'd be doing so. I deal with patent applications a lot at work because they're often used as evidence in trials that I work on, and there's no way around the fact that they're hard to decipher. Bloggers are bound to read a lot into this, and a lot of the speculation is going to be based on a lack of information."
Gentz took a more diplomatic wait-and-see tone in the most recent update to the FutureTap post:
"Since all this is pure speculation, I guess our best advice is to stay calm and see what the lawyers say. After all, we should take legal advice from non-lawyers with a pinch of caution.
Also, we do hope that we’ll get a response to the inquiries we sent to Apple. (Actually, one of the reasons we waited nearly a week with this post, was to give Apple time to respond. When we were bombarded with rfc’s yesterday, we had to come out of the hiding, though.) So before we jump to false conclusions, we should give Apple a fair chance to explain."
Here's your chance, Apple.
