Apple, and app developer and former Pinterest engineer Kosta Eleftheriou reached a settlement agreement over a lawsuit involving App Store rejection and scam.
Earlier this summer, the court filings show a request to dismiss the lawsuit, which was filed in California's Superior Court in Santa Clara County in March 2021.
The lawsuit filed by Eleftheriou alleged that FlickType, the app that he developed, had been "unfairly rejected" from the App Store. Moreover, he said that it lost revenues because it was targeted by scammers.
The Lawsuit Between Eleftheriou and Apple
According to Tech Times, the one who asked to dismiss the lawsuit was Kpaw, Eleftheriou's company. The request for the dismissal was made last July 21 as both parties reached an agreement.
The legal battle between Apple, and Eleftheriou illustrate the developer's discontent with Apple's App Store business.
According to TechCrunch, there have been dissatisfaction among many developers since Apple is requiring them to pay commissions on their own sales.
Moreover, the developers are also not happy with how the App Store "incentivizes scammers to rip off and profit from legitimate developers' work," as per TechCrunch.
However, despite the dissatisfaction of the developers, only few of them choose to bring this matter to court, and Eleftheriou is one of those few.
According to Eleftheriou, Apple allegedly rejected his FlickType Apple Watch keyboard app from the App Store.
To make matters worse, the company approved competitor keyboard apps that utilized integrated version of FlickType keyboard. These competitors keyboard apps were allowed to publish to the App Store, much to Eleftheriou dismay.
The action of Apple, according to Eleftheriou, seems to contradict Apple's claim that the FlickType keyboard offered a "poor user experience."
Eventually the keyboard app was allowed to reenter the App Store. However, it became a target of App Store scammers who gave the app fake ratings and reviews.
As consumers were opted to go for "better-rated" alternatives, FlickType's revenue dropped from $130,000 to $20,000 on its first month.
Eleftheriou did not issue a comment regarding the terms of the settlement. Likewise, Apple did not issue a statement on the dismissal of the case.
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The App Store Guidelines were updated by Apple. New rules regarding scam apps were added to the guidelines.
While the company put back "Report a Problem" button to the App Store, much is needed to be done, as per 9to5Mac.
Eleftheriou isn't the only one who complained about the App Store. It can be recalled that developer Kevin Archer of the popular Authenticator app complained about the iOS App Store back in February due to the "copycats" of his app.
Despite Archer's complaint regarding the copycat of his, Apple failed to do much action regarding the matter.
Apple's lack of concern over the developers' complaints appears to have a major impact to the company. According to 9to5Mac, an antitrust lawsuit against Apple is being drafted by the U.S. Department of Justice.
The report from 9to5Mac also mentioned that the lawsuit will focus on Apple's anti-competitive practices, particularly the one related to App Store.
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