App Store filling up with spammers and clones of popular apps
Marco Arment has noticed a growing problem on the App Store; as hits emerge from among the free and paid apps, some companies are doing a little search scamming. They're ripping off the names, styles, and sometimes even the art of popular iPhone apps. He went to get the popular Angry Birds game and found that there are companies actually selling apps with "Cheats" and "Trivia" added on to the titles, often reusing the artwork from the original game.
Certainly, some of these fall into a legal gray area (Angry Bird is technically another game, even though it's obviously hopping on the back of the more popular title), but some of them are straight up scams, and the angry reviews and terrible ratings prove that's the case. Arment calls out a few companies (whose titles are still on the App Store, as of this writing). He says that developers who feel an app is infringing on their trademarks can send a message to appstorenotices@apple.com to let Apple know about the problem.
We'd love to see Apple clean house on these, but of course, we're not yet sure of their position. They may have some guidelines that define how close an app can get before it's actually infringing, but some of these are clearly over the line. We'll have to wait and see what actions Apple decides to take.
