Attention Developers, Using Apple’s Trademarked Shiny Chat Bubbles in your App may Delay its Approval

Thursday, September 3, 2009

Apple has been notorious for its inconsistencies in its App Store approval process. Another app approval controversy surfaced today tells the story of a developer’s apps rejection due to Apple trademarks violations. In this case, Chess Wars has an important bug update that has been in limbo for over 6 weeks. The developers have been trying to contact Apple’s app review team without much results until they posted a profanity laced rant on their blog recently. When the Apple representatives finally got back to them, they were told that the update cannot be approved because it contains shiny chat bubbles too similar to those used in SMS on the iPhone.

It appears that those chat bubbles in iPhone’s SMS client are trademarked by Apple. Those who use it without Apple’s permission are violating Apple’s trademark. Apple app approval representative recommends that Chess Wars modify their chat bubbles to make them less shinier. They even suggested to make those bubbles square.

These recommendations don’t make much sense. Tweetie and Facebook both have chat bubbles that look like those shiny trademarked chat bubbles. The difference is that these apps include thumbnails of user photos. Chess Wars developers figured adding a thumbnail a la Facebook would make Apple happy. However, Apple says that it is the chat bubbles themselves that are violating its trademark.

This is such a blatant display of inconsistency! There are so many other Apple approved apps with those shiny chat bubbles. Perhaps other app reviewers didn’t catch the chat bubbles trademark violation when they were reviewing Facebook. Now, with “Shiny Chat Bubbles App Approval” stories hitting the newswires, Apple may have to give this issue a real hard look. We may soon see those chat bubbles disappear or modified in Facebook and Tweetie. Because if they don’t, a lot of App developers, especially those from Chess Wars, may start another crusade against Apple’s App Store.