From the looks of it, they're a total scam developer. How does this stuff get into the store? At least two of their apps use the logos of other apps with some quick filtering to change the colors.
I guess Apple isn't doing much more than a cursory check against trademarks when approving apps. That seems really dangerous. Copyright infringement procedures are well defined by the DMCA. Trademark doesn't have an equivalent law.
To quickly follow up on your aside regarding how this might work for copyright issues (as opposed to for trademarks): the DMCA procedures do not apply to Apple due to their specific curation: they have forfeited any possible safe harbor protections, and the procedure for dealing with them is not simply a take down notice.
Thereby, if you have an issue with an app in the App Store, you can and probably should (as in, the American legal system will, in the end, fail to work correctly for you if you don't) directly sue Apple for any copyright infringement that occurs in their App Store. (Of course, most directly, what you should do is talk to your lawyer. ;P)
(I am not a lawyer, but I do run Cydia, the alternative to the app store that distributes substrate extensions for jailbroken devices, and have in the past run other systems such as Cyrket. I thereby have received a fair number of C&D's myself, and have had my own lawyers brief me on these matters.)
(That said, Cyrket had DMCA safe harbor and for Cydia I only host my own work, so I can easily and often be fuzzy about details as they might apply to companies like Apple. It is interesting, though, to hear at conferences from people at Google about the balance the Android Market must keep to maintain their DMCA safe harbor.)
I highly doubt that curating the market removes the safe harbor immunity. They are no longer a common carrier, perhaps, but that's orthogonal to the DMCA safe harbor.
I appreciate your doubt, but am having a difficult time matching it up with the law. In specific, the DMCA safe harbor provisions only apply to entities that can be called "service providers", and Apple's prior-to-posting editorial control over the contents of their catalog then seems to be incompatible with the definitions that are laid out in USC § 512. Apple, playing the role of online retailer, thereby seems to be every bit as responsible for the content of their App Store as if they were to be hand-compiling printed catalogs of products for their own mail-order company for which they stocked their own inventory.
In comparison, Google pulls some ludicrous stunts to maintain separation: developers sign up separately for a payment merchant account (yes, also from Google ;P) and are legally responsible for things like their own sales tax collection (yes, this is insane). Google, then, attempts to claim that they are just a mechanism to allow direct-from-developer-to-user sales of products, and that their catalog is nothing more than web hosting. (This also has the horrible side effect, of course, that even if someone at Google has reason to believe something is sketch in their store, they have to not touch it and wait for something to come through channels.)
I am pretty certain that would not hold up in court: because they do very specific curation of their App Store (including reading the descriptions for content and vetoing certain forms of text), they are legally liable for all of the content displayed in their catalog.
In fact, due to the way the American legal system works (with our concept of "joint and several liability"), Apple would probably end up paying any and all trademark damages, and would then have to go after the developer to recover as much as they could themselves.
Nope. When I first submitted SharePics the logo had a white space at the bottom. They rejected it because they said it looked like a Polaroid. Apple needs to be more consistent, either curate the hell out of it, or don't. Inconsistent application of the rules make it more confusing for naive users.
Not only naive users, it makes it pretty hard to get a feeling for what's acceptable even for seasoned developers with good intentions. (Volume button for camera, anyone?)
Apple does respond to complaints from trademark holders. It's not Apple's job to determine trademark infringement; it's the job of the trademark holder to protect their marks. When Microsoft files a complaint, Apple will take down the offending app, assuming the violation can be proven. The burden of proof (as in the courts) is on the trademark holder, not the seller.
They usually do catch or question or flag apps that can't provide license to use trademarks. We publish apps using well known apps and they sometimes get rejected until we can prove we have permission by the mark holders.
Apple's job is not to do a check against trademarks when reviewing an app. They test for bugs and malicious code. The test private API's aren't being used and they check it meets the public guidelines document.
I've released an app before which infringed on a trademark (accidentally, I didn't realise the name of this sport was trademarked). The owner of the trademark emails Apple, who forwards it to the developer who is told to take action immediately and respond to the trademark owner. If there isn't a quick resolution Apple will take down the app. They even have a check box when you are submitting an update which tells them if you are updating for a legal reason. I presume they would then expedite the review process.
The app store feels like some corrupt east european kleptocracy. Your only chance to get featured is if you have some inside connections. And if you need "special" functionality in your app - no problem! Inside connections help again.
From the looks of it, they're a total scam developer. How does this stuff get into the store? At least two of their apps use the logos of other apps with some quick filtering to change the colors.
I guess Apple isn't doing much more than a cursory check against trademarks when approving apps. That seems really dangerous. Copyright infringement procedures are well defined by the DMCA. Trademark doesn't have an equivalent law.