Guideline 4.1 Copy Cats - Questions

I am part of a supporter's group for a soccer team. To help expand the supporters group and get information out to our members I developed an app that has some information about the group, a list of "chants" and videos of them that we sing at games, a list of events, and a list of links. I submitted this app under my personal account to save the supporter's group money with having to pay for an apple developer account every year.


Upon submitting the app to the app store I received this back:


Guideline 4.1 Copy Cats

Specifically, your app includes content that resembles one or multiple third-party sports teams and/or leagues.


I do not include any logos of the team that we are a supporter's group of. I do include logos produced by our supporters group that are specifically for our supporter's group. I also mention that we are an official supporter's group of the team and the team's name.


I was thinking that if I submit again, but with explanations on official letter head from the team stating that we can claim that we are an official supporter's group and from the supporter's group that this app has permission to use logos/etc. if this will help.


Let me know if anyone has any specific recommendations.

Thanks in advance!!

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n8all3n
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No one here can tell you what review will/won't accept reject. My opinion is to file an appeal that includes permission from the club, if you have it, and see what happens.


Otherwise, keep in mind that Apple looks to protect the rights of content owners, and seems rarely swayed by good intentions and casual self-attestation.


Good luck.

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KMT
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Are you sure they speak of the images oand not of the app itself which would look like many other similar apps ?

They speak of copycat, not copyright.


  • 4.1 Copycats
  • Come up with your own ideas. We know you have them, so make yours come to life. Don’t simply copy the latest popular app on the App Store, or make some minor changes to another app’s name or UI and pass it off as your own. In addition to risking an intellectual property infringement claim, it makes the App Store harder to navigate and just isn’t fair to your fellow developers.
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Claude31
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> I was thinking that if I submit again,


You can appeal, no need to resubmit.


> with explanations on official letter head from the team stating that we can claim that we are an official supporter's group and from the supporter's group that this app has permission to use logos/etc. if this will help.


As indicacted by others, this is a 4.1 issue (copy cat) not a 5.2 issue (copyright) although 4.1 does suggest that in copying you may be infringing. So your idea is a good one. I'd add one more thing in the notes to App Review - about 3 years ago Apple rejected many similar individual apps submitted by a single developer and asked the developer to combine the individual apps into a single collective app. The user would then use an IAP within the one free collective app to select the individual specific application they wanted. For example - your app could be almost duplicated and used by all teams in the league. If you tried to create multiple apps - one for each team in the league - Apple would hit you with a 4.1 rejection and ask you to create a single app for the league with a 'pick your team' capability. They called it 'stop cluttering the App Store'. I speculate that App Review is concerned that is what you are doing or planning on doing. So add a note in App Review that states you are making this single app only for this single team and have no plans to use the app for any other team or purpose.


And, TestFlight is your friend here. Especially if all your customers are willing to share their email address with you.

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PBK
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