So yeah, I created an iPhone app called Bricking News. It took about 2 weeks of development time and about 4 weeks of waiting while the app went through the approval process. Part of the reason why it took so long in review was that I included the term “Star Wars” in the keywords to describe my app. Why Star Wars? ‘Cause I figured since I run a LEGO Star Wars website, and it was included in the app, why not? Seemed pretty harmless. But as it turned out it was a bad idea. Someone from Apple’s legal team contacted me with the following:
Thank you for submitting Bricking News to the App Store. We’ve reviewed Bricking News and determined that we cannot post your application because it appears to contain features, namely, images and marks in your application’s keywords, that bear a resemblance to a well-known third-party mark, Star Wars, that infringes on rights owned by Lucas Films.
Clearly they did not review the app thoroughly enough to know that there was no infringing going on. It’s not like I had a picture of Darth Vader as my icon or on the splash screen or anything like that.
They went on to request evidence that I have permission to use the trademark. Annoyed by their lack of effort in actually reviewing the app, I just resubmitted the binary and removed the keyword. I responded to the email by saying, “if reporting news on Star Wars is infringing on a trademark then there are a lot of media outlets that are in trouble.”
Whatever.
So after resubmitting and another week or two of waiting, the app is now live. Yay.