If you write to someone and they don't respond, there's obviously no contract, agreement or approval granted. This means he had no right to clone your game. Fairly obvious. The other party didn't respond to your initial communications and probably only contacted you once they realized apple would take their cloned application off the app store and thereby stop their own income. He only contacted you when it would benefit himself. If you take legal action against this person or company, I would expect you to win the case as the duplication is extremely obvious. Furthermore, the other party has already acknowledged their use of your game by supposedly writing to you initially. The other party would be liable for legal costs, copyright infringement and loss of income for you. ...so it wouldn't just be a case of dividing up the profits. I recommend you seek legal advise before reaching any agreement. And include those legal costs in any settlement. I also suggest you arrange direct access to the sales figures, rather than trusting figures advised by the other party. Any agreement should be historical ie: includes all sales since the release date. I assume you would maintain ownership of the game...and would be providing a licensing agreement to the other party, which is restricted to the iPhone platform only, for a given period of time. Any agreement you reach should be in writing and signed with a lawyer, to avoid future issues. Just a few thoughts.... Good luck... Red1.
And what will happen to people (like myself) who have purchased the game? I love CoolMathGames so when I saw Rotate & Roll for sale in the App Store, I immediately purchased it, not knowing it was being sold in this way. So what can I expect?!
I also suggest you don't post your thoughts online. Eg: you wrote an update on the first page saying that you think a shared profit arrangement might work... But the other party will be reading this thread ...so don't share your thoughts or plans.
You can probably expect it to disappear with no further support given. You could request a refund from Apple and you'd likely get it, just tell them you didn't mean to purchase the app. I'm not sure if the developer gets to keep their share of the money or not... that would be unfortunate.
And how do you request a refund from Apple? Should they not automatically refund me?! I should not have to research an app before I purchase it. If Apple allows the game into their App Store, is it not their responsibility?
That's more a question of morals I suppose... but the bottom line is there are so many app submissions every single day it would be literally impossible for them to check them all for copyright infringement. It's probably written somewhere in the Terms of Service or whatever documents are provided to people submitting their own apps. To request a refund you need to use iTunes. Go to your account page by clicking your username at the top right of the screen and selecting "Account" then locate the "Purchase History" button. At the bottom it'll say "Report a Problem" and from there you select which game you want a refund for, write a comment or whatever and send it off to Apple. It's not exactly the simplest of procedures but they probably don't want people abusing it too easily.
And do you think I should do this now or wait and see how this plays out? If the actually owners of Rotate & Roll do end up reaching a deal & supporting this app, then I want to keep it and support them. This game is actually pretty fun, although the controls need work. What would you do? Get a refund now or wait and see how this goes? Thank you for the help.
If you're really that worried about it I'd just get the refund now. If they decide to support the app you can just buy it again and you won't have lost any money. Assuming the price stays the same.
You know you're being taken advantage of, don't you? From your posts, you strike me as a nice guy that doesn't want things to get nasty. You seem to prefer to settle this in as friendly a way as possible and I totally sympathize with your feeling... But no matter how nice these guys sound in their emails or how reasonable you deem their proposal, nothing will change the fact that they stole from you. This is no way to start a business relationship. If I were you, I'd accept a share of the profits so far, but I'd ask that they take the app down immediately. If they acted in good faith, as they seem to claim, they should have no problem with this.
Plus if you go with their proposal they might attempt the same thing with other games. Developers stealing work then agreeing to share the profits isn't really the kind of scam we want to associate the App Store with.
No No No! Don't take that offer. They stole from you and thats it. This should be your game and only yours. Why take part of the profit when you could have all. Plus, its their name as the devs. Do you really want them to be known as the ones who created it?
Hey guys, I know you are right, but there are 3 reasons make me inclined to accept his offer. 1. Our firm is facing to close down, that means we need money to survive. For us, the sooner we get the money the better. 2. If the app has taken down and we put back our own version, we don't know for sure if it could climb back to the top. 3. I just don't want to argue more, so I can use the time to make new games. That's what I've thought.
well, now you've told the other guy that you're desperate...so that's not going to help you get a good deal...
Man this sucks... especially that the copy is high in the charts. Some advice, do not discuss this in a public forum and get some legal advice. Also, contact Apple and explain that the clone is infringing copyright and find out what options are open: 1. Will Apple freeze payments to the other developer while this gets sorted out legally. 2. If the App gets pulled and you win legally and if Apple freeze the money, then find out if that money will be awarded to you. But you must contact Apple because if the other dev gets a payment then they will have more money than you and it will make your legal battle harder. Also it will be harder to get the money off the other dev. This type of theft gives the App Store a bad name. Do not accept their offer because they basically stole from you... and they know that which is why they contacted you in the end with an offer. You can forgot about doing your own version now because the damage has been done - which is why you want to contact Apple to pull the game and freeze payments. If you win legally (no reason why you should not) you can sue the other developer for damages and loss of earnings.
If you are sharing the profit with the developer you better be getting more than 50% considering the dev outright stole your entire game.
I think your reasons are perfectly rational and reasonable, and that it makes sense for you to accept the offer. But consult a lawyer and make sure to get teeth in any deal, even if it is "only" 50%. It's incredibly hard to get an app in the top 10. Their port of your game is very well done, and has the benefit of being featured by Apple. You'll almost certainly end up with more money with a revenue share than with any other action you might persue.
This does seem to be a pretty outrageously blatant rip-off. I certainly don't want to offend the developer but I'm curious, when I first saw Angry Birds I thought it was a fairly shameless rip off as well, so how blurry is the line? If the name/artwork/music had been significantly different would that be ok? Levels shifted around? At what point is a game "inspired by" vs "ripped off"?
"Inspired by" is quite obviously different to having all of your assets stolen and used without permission.
