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I've been working on a small iPhone app that displays web content using the devices GPS context. I am hoping to list this application in the AppStore for free.
If I list the application under my name, does this create any considerable liability considerations?
Thanks in advance,
Ben
This is one of those questions that really belongs on a forum for IP lawyers. I'm not a lawyer, so this is somewhat speculative and should not be taken as legal advice.
A good rule of thumb is that anything you put in the public domain can open you up to legal liability. Whether you put your name on an application or not is irrelevant to whether or not you can be sued.
The open source people often include some boilerplate that amounts to "No express or implied warranty on this application, not even a promise that it will work and not brick your phone." How effective this boilerplate is would need a lawyer's perspective.
You appear to be in the USA, so the answer is "of course it does". And listing it in some other way also does. Anything you do, anywhere, at any time, that affects anyone in any way might well be taken as grounds for a lawsuit. If you want specific legal advice you should be talking to a lawyer.
IANAL, either. But if you give something away for free, something earnestly intended to help its users - and if you explain what it is, and whatever risks you're aware of - I don't think you have much to worry about. Certainly, you shouldn't. I say, do your best to make it good, safe, and all that, and set it free.
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avoiding the obvious answer, "Maybe I shouldn't have been given this to work on."
Let's just assume I was given this as a complex 'test of my abilities to learn on the job'.
The app is using serverless framework and I understand the basics of the structure using AWS and where certain things go etc, but I am not used to the structure of the app i was given.
I have a folder for backend, app, and one for 'graph'. I would just like to know where to start? Is the suggested route to user 'serverless-offline' or being that I didn't design this app, should I go straight to plugging things into my AWS, and get it running that way? I know this is kind of a noob question, and regardless I'm just going to go ahead and start playing around with the two options, but I do have a small window of time to figure out how to get this running in a 'Dev' environment so I can give a quote on adding some new React things to the app.
Are you working for a consulting company that advertised you as an "expert" to a customer where you actually have a severe knowledge gap to even approach the project you've been put on?
If yes, you aren't going to get much more information here in a reasonable sized answer than you can easily find using a web search. In fact, your question is so vague that I personally think it's not answerable at all. So, get searching on your own, hopefully you can figure out enough stuff by the deadline that you/your company can "fake it until you make it".
If not, and you are an employee in a normal company, you should have some sort of knowledge transfer process in place where someone who is familiar with the application would tell you at least an overview of how it works and how to approach it for basic changes. Unless this person left the company and now there is nobody in house with the needed knowledge, which is your boss's/company's problem and - if they are a good company - they should give you a reasonable amount of time to figure out all of this stuff the hard way, in which case the answer is - again - get searching the web.
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I have a client who has a fancy facebook page and it looking to create a website that mirrors some of the facebook functionality. I started developing the interface and moved to wondering just how much of facebook can be cloned or copied. I'm assuming that have some sort of copyright on their site. What point does it go from being a generic blog/posting/comment site to copyrighted material of facebook. We are looking at the ability for users to make post, comments on post and can like both comments and post. Also with a similar layout and format to facebook.Hhowever we are not sure if this is possible. How much can be copied?
I done a decent search into this and have found no information. Nothing on what can be mirrored and nothing about facebooks copyright. Only information on peoples details being copyright and the like. Is there any information on this? Where can I find it?
I'm also interest in what you guys thing is the responsibility for the developer. According to my client it is my responsibility to know copyright information and to find all this out. I can see my clients side but I'm not a lawyer and this is well beyond my expertise and anything I have professional experience with. Generally I conduct developed according to client specifications. What are your thought on this? How it is normally conducted? I cannot confidently make advise on the subject of copyright material.
Don't worry about it. You can emulate most of these things without concern. It's not really "copyright" you are dealing with, but rather Facebook's rather flimsy patents.
It is highly unlikely that Facebook would sue you succesfully. Even to get to that point, you would have to present a significant threat to their business, which would be a long way away given that you don't seem to have started coding anything.
The only issue would be if you were to exactly copy/paste Facebook's CSS, HTML or Javascript files into your own code (which I don't think is what you're planning to do).
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I'm writing a class that extends a UIScrollView to display a large tiled image, and I've realized that the TiledScrollView from Apple's ScrollViewSuite sample code does the same thing very well. Can I use their code, or do I have to write my own, even if it ends up heavily inspired by Apple's code?
If it makes a difference, I don't have any plans (at the moment) to monetize the app.
Typically I would take the "I am not a lawyer" route, but Apple really is quite clear in their license. You can pretty well do whatever you want with it. You can certainly use it in your products in any of the ways you likely have in mind, and Apple encourages you to do so. The only restrictions they really have in there are standard BSD-style things: don't sue us, don't say you're part of Apple, and "if you redistribute the Apple Software in its entirety and
without modifications, you must retain this notice..." (so don't strip off their notice and put the source code on your web site and pretend you wrote it).
Apple's example code license is in the same realm with BSD and MIT. Very laid back; easy to comply with.
I don't think they care. A lot of developers (myself included) include the Reachability sample in their code and it hasn't caused any rejections that I'm aware of.
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I've created an app, that is self-explanatory. What is the etiquette in the iPhone world: do I still need to have an About button that explains what the app does, website, email, all that? Or is that unnecessary?
I wouldn't consider it necessary, but then again I would get a second opinion about your app being self-explanatory; you wrote it after all :) Seriously, I've found a lot of "obvious" UI and behavior I've written over the years to be not so, and it's helped to have opinions from others (especially those who don't use computers for day-to-day work) to bring more clarity.
But from an etiquette standpoint, I'd say no: in fact if your app truly is self-explanatory it'll just get in the way of what your app does, which is what consumers are after.
I think that you almost always need one, especially in a paid application. You want it to be as easy as possible for your users to get in contact with you for support (no need to make an upset user angrier by making them search for your contact info), because happy users leave good reviews, and support requests often help you to figure out what needs work in your app. Additionally, if you release a free app but you also have some paid apps for sale, I think the free apps need an about screen that will send your users to your page on the App Store; after all, you might as well get some free, non-invasive promotion when giving away something.
The only time you probably don't want to include an about screen is when you don't want to hear from users. If you're giving away a free app, and you don't want to deal with people having problems with it, then don't even bother with an about box. Or if you're Apple, since about boxes in their apps would be redundant.
I don't entirely agree with zoul here. I think that every app should include information about how to contact the developer and/or get support if it's needed. Yes, you can put this information in the App Store listing, but that makes it more difficult for your customer. I'd say yes, add the About view.
The etiquette in the iPhone world is to design sane applications. If your application does not need an About screen, don’t do it. Those who want support can always check out your application description in the App Store.
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I’m almost ready to offer an IPhone application on the Apple App. Store and make my millions. ;)
For those of you that have gone before, have you formed a business (LLC or proprietorship) to keep things legal?
In the end, it really depends on your plans for your app development. If you're intending to make this a "real" business you'd absolutely want to incorporate for the legal protection and tax advantages. If this is just a hobby/something you're doing in your spare time then I wouldn't bother.
We've used LegalZoom a couple of times to incorporate; plan to spend <= $2K or so to get it done from soup-to-nuts.
I would say that depends largely on the nature of your application. If your app deals with personal information or in some way could damage other data or information on the phone itself, you might want to make sure you're covered liability wise.
If it's a game or something that won't (shouldn't) affect that type of thing, then you might be just fine going it alone.
I used my name. At the time I signed up, I was hearing horror stories about how long it was taking companies to be approved, while approval for individuals was flying through. Perhaps that's changed.
Don't assume that incorporating will protect you from liability. See here