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Legal Issues? There's an app for that (view source)
Revision as of 11:35, 13 July 2011
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Another suggestion some people have offered is to remake these apps in a fashion that would make them essentially function as parsers for external databases not part of the app. I personally feel this is actually a rather dangerous proposition. For starters, this doesn't necessarily prevent IP claims against the app itself, should the name incorporate anything which might link it to the Pokémon franchise. Secondly, can you demonstrate any non-infringing uses of the app? Tape recorders, CD/DVD/Blu-Ray burners, BitTorrent, these all have substantial legitimate uses, which prevented their underlying technology from being targeted legally even though there's potential for misuse of them to commit infringement of intellectual property and/or copyright. These apps would have no such defense, since they'd have to be highly specialized to parse a Pokédex database, and there's really no other use for them. Finally, where are you going to get this database from? If the information is parsed off a website in real time (as opposed to a download which is plugged into the app), then you've got all sorts of other issues. Even if the website allows you to do this (and old-timers may recall a situation where we actively worked to disable and break an app which did exactly this with our Pokémon pages on Bulbapedia), then you're only putting fansites in the firing line for potential legal action, and that's one of the most dangerous situations we could get ourselves into. | Another suggestion some people have offered is to remake these apps in a fashion that would make them essentially function as parsers for external databases not part of the app. I personally feel this is actually a rather dangerous proposition. For starters, this doesn't necessarily prevent IP claims against the app itself, should the name incorporate anything which might link it to the Pokémon franchise. Secondly, can you demonstrate any non-infringing uses of the app? Tape recorders, CD/DVD/Blu-Ray burners, BitTorrent, these all have substantial legitimate uses, which prevented their underlying technology from being targeted legally even though there's potential for misuse of them to commit infringement of intellectual property and/or copyright. These apps would have no such defense, since they'd have to be highly specialized to parse a Pokédex database, and there's really no other use for them. Finally, where are you going to get this database from? If the information is parsed off a website in real time (as opposed to a download which is plugged into the app), then you've got all sorts of other issues. Even if the website allows you to do this (and old-timers may recall a situation where we actively worked to disable and break an app which did exactly this with our Pokémon pages on Bulbapedia), then you're only putting fansites in the firing line for potential legal action, and that's one of the most dangerous situations we could get ourselves into. | ||
Of course, this isn't even bringing up the issue of | Of course, this isn't even bringing up the issue of The Pokémon Company releasing their own app. When I originally discussed these issues with Nolan and Tim, the Pokédex app for the 3DS had yet to be announced, so it was somewhat gratifying to see my prediction to them of an official app being released coming true so quickly. On top of that, we've just had the announcement in the last few days of a Pokémon rhythm game app to be released for the iPhone and Android in Japan. Personally, I can only think of these mobile apps as a tactical move by The Pokémon Company. With them actually having apps in the market, it's a lot easier for them to launch legal claims to have them removed. With iOS apps in particular, the existence of an official Pokémon app there may even lead to Apple automatically rejecting any unofficial Pokémon apps submitted. | ||
==Marketing issues== | ==Marketing issues== | ||