App developer Kosta Eleftheriou’s lawsuit against Apple over its App Store’s poorly defined policies has been approved by California’s Superior Court, with some amendments notwithstanding.
Seems like big tech companies like Alphabet, Apple, and Meta keep getting thrown lawsuit after lawsuit at them with each passing month. Which, to be fair, is more than a reasonable trade-off for being a multimillionaire company that absolutely refuses to treat its userbase and developers with any form of human dignity. Moreover, what we tend to forget is that for every lawsuit that manages to make it to court, there are a hundred that never even take off from the ground due to any number of reasons, and many more are either dismissed by a judge or settled out of court for some minute sum. It isn’t easy going up against any multinational company, especially in a late-stage capitalistic world that actively supports such pillars. Therefore, watching the few that actually manage to run the gambit of paying out legal fees, going to court, and then being accepted as legitimate complaints is honestly a sight for sore eyes. Do I expect much to come out of this lawsuit? Probably not, but let’s dive into the details anyways and hope for the best.
The plaintiff is app developer Kosta Eleftheriou, a name that I really want to heard pronounced out loud for my own curiosity to be sated. At any rate, Eleftheriou isn’t new to either app development or even the big company games: he used to act as a software engineer for Pinterest before moving on to his own path. Now, the man’s complaints are twofold, with both of them centering around the App Store and its relatively unscrupulous activities. The App Store has been criticized on any number of days, and was even the subject of yet another lawsuit from game development company Epic Games. However, this isn’t about costs; rather, Eleftheriou’s complaints arise from how hard it was to make it to the App Store, and how much he lost once he got there.
Eleftheriou’s complaints revolve around his keyboard app, named FlickType, being removed from the App Store on multiple occasions without any clear justification being provided for each time. Apple simply stated that the product did not meet the company’s standards, and even went so far as to state that keyboard apps for the Apple Watch (which FlickType was geared towards) are not allowed. That latter part is absolutely false, since many other competitors such as Reddit, WhatsApp, and Twitter have their own keyboard apps on the App Store. Eleftheriou’s second complaint is one of scammers leading to a dip in profits. After FlickType was finally approved, and earned a solid USD $130,000 within its first month, many copycats stormed the App Store, bolstered by fake reports and the like. Profits dropped by USD $20,000 due to this, and Eleftheriou wants compensation.
Read next: Apple Is Introducing Unlisted Applications To The App Store For More Personal User Usage
I’m now looking forward to presenting my case to the court, and I'm confident that justice will prevail.
— Kosta Eleftheriou (@keleftheriou) January 31, 2022
But I can’t help but think of all the other developers whose stories we won’t hear: people unable – or unwilling – to take the world’s biggest company to court.
Seems like big tech companies like Alphabet, Apple, and Meta keep getting thrown lawsuit after lawsuit at them with each passing month. Which, to be fair, is more than a reasonable trade-off for being a multimillionaire company that absolutely refuses to treat its userbase and developers with any form of human dignity. Moreover, what we tend to forget is that for every lawsuit that manages to make it to court, there are a hundred that never even take off from the ground due to any number of reasons, and many more are either dismissed by a judge or settled out of court for some minute sum. It isn’t easy going up against any multinational company, especially in a late-stage capitalistic world that actively supports such pillars. Therefore, watching the few that actually manage to run the gambit of paying out legal fees, going to court, and then being accepted as legitimate complaints is honestly a sight for sore eyes. Do I expect much to come out of this lawsuit? Probably not, but let’s dive into the details anyways and hope for the best.
The plaintiff is app developer Kosta Eleftheriou, a name that I really want to heard pronounced out loud for my own curiosity to be sated. At any rate, Eleftheriou isn’t new to either app development or even the big company games: he used to act as a software engineer for Pinterest before moving on to his own path. Now, the man’s complaints are twofold, with both of them centering around the App Store and its relatively unscrupulous activities. The App Store has been criticized on any number of days, and was even the subject of yet another lawsuit from game development company Epic Games. However, this isn’t about costs; rather, Eleftheriou’s complaints arise from how hard it was to make it to the App Store, and how much he lost once he got there.
Eleftheriou’s complaints revolve around his keyboard app, named FlickType, being removed from the App Store on multiple occasions without any clear justification being provided for each time. Apple simply stated that the product did not meet the company’s standards, and even went so far as to state that keyboard apps for the Apple Watch (which FlickType was geared towards) are not allowed. That latter part is absolutely false, since many other competitors such as Reddit, WhatsApp, and Twitter have their own keyboard apps on the App Store. Eleftheriou’s second complaint is one of scammers leading to a dip in profits. After FlickType was finally approved, and earned a solid USD $130,000 within its first month, many copycats stormed the App Store, bolstered by fake reports and the like. Profits dropped by USD $20,000 due to this, and Eleftheriou wants compensation.
Read next: Apple Is Introducing Unlisted Applications To The App Store For More Personal User Usage
