Apple settles lawsuit with developer over App Store releases and scams

App developer's lawsuit over App Store denials, scams and fraud ended in settlement after court filings showed a motion to dismiss the lawsuit earlier this summer. Complainant, app developer and former Pinterest engineer Kosta Eleftheriou has made a name for himself in recent months calling out some of the App Store's most egregious scams. This then culminated in his own lawsuit against Apple, filed in California Superior Court in Santa Clara County in March 2021, where he alleged his own app was unjustly rejected from the App Store and then targeted by scammers, resulting in loss of revenue. .

The case was a high-profile example of developer dissatisfaction with Apple's App Store. Many developers have become dissatisfied not only with the requirement to pay Apple commissions on their own sales – something Epic Games is currently pursuing – but also with the way the App Store model itself entices scammers to scam and profit from the legitimate work of developers. But few take these cases to court, as Eleftheriou did.

His complaint alleged that not only did Apple reject its FlickType Apple Watch keyboard app from the App Store, but it then endorsed competing keyboard apps and others that used a built-in version of the FlickType keyboard to publish on the App Store. This apparently contradicted Apple's claim that the FlickType keyboard provided a "poor user experience", given that Apple's own app review team greenlighted the same technology when integrated into other apps like Nano for Reddit, Chirp for Twitter, WatchChat for WhatsApp, and Lens for Instagram. .

Furthermore, when the keyboard app was allowed to re-enter the App Store, its early success made it a target for App Store scammers who launched less usable competitors, spurred on by fake ratings and reviews.

As a result, FlickType's own revenue fell from $130,000 in its first month to just $20,000 as consumers opted for the "higher-rated" alternatives, the developer said.

After the case was filed last year, both sides participated in court appeals with a judge, according to court filing, including as recently as this spring. A request to dismiss the lawsuit was later filed on July 21, 2022, after Apple and Kpaw (Eleftheriou's company) reached an agreement.

Eleftheriou was unable to comment on the terms of the settlement. Apple was also unable to comment on the dismissal immediately.

However, it's hard to imagine the developer would have agreed to dismiss the deal if the terms weren't at least somewhat acceptable, given its constant criticism of the App Store's d 'Apple and the challenges developers face.

Last year, for example, Eleftheriou was the source of articles about App Store scams, such as a crypto wallet app that cheated a user out of their savings (~$600,000); a children's game containing a hidden online casino; and a VPN app that defrauded its users of $5 million a year, among other things. His findings also came up in a series of questions during a Senate antitrust hearing in April 2021, when Apple Chief Compliance Officer Kyle Andeer explained why Apple was unable to locate itself. even this type of scams, since they were "trivially easy to identify". citing Eleftheriou's work.

Most recently, the FTC brought fake App Store reviews to light as part of a broader action against rental platform Roomster,