Another Game Innovator Is Shut Down By Copyright Claims

This is a new commercial of iPhone 3G, it talks about App Store.

Over the past couple months we have covered the tale of Scrabulous, the popular Facebook application which brought the traditional game of Scrabble to the online environment. After more than nine months of threats, Hasbro, the owner of Scrabble, finally created their own version of the game and, more importantly, sued the makers of Scrabulous.

Now, an eerily similar situation is taking place through the iPhone App Store. The maker of a Tetris-like game called "Tris" reports that due to legal action by the Tetris Company, he is going to remove the application from the App Store. Apple, he says, demanded he resolve the dispute personally or they would "take action." Although the developer believes he is on fairly firm legal ground, as a poor college student, he cannot afford the time or money to defend his application. He calls the approach "little more than petty bullying."

This scenario and Scrabulous are indicators of the increasing importance of the platform operators who have the ability to shut down applications (and in the case of Apple, even disable previously installed applications). The developers who are building on these platforms are beholden to gatekeepers which, more often than not, err on the side of over-enforcement.