Apple settles lawsuit with app developer over unfair rejection of app

Apple has settled a lawsuit with app developer Kosta Eleftheriou who claimed that the tech giant unfairly rejected his app from App Store which resulted in heavy monetary losses.

The lawsuit, filed in March last year, alleged that Apple made it difficult for him to sell his app, Flicktype, on App Store, reports TechCrunch.

The tech giant allegedly used its monopoly power to "crush" developers competing with it through "exploitive fees and selective application of opaque and unreasonable constraints", the lawsuit claimed.

Eleftheriou had filed the lawsuit in California's Superior Court in Santa Clara County.

He alleged that Apple not only rejected his FlickType Apple Watch keyboard app from the App Store, "it then approved competitor keyboard apps and others that used an integrated version of FlickType keyboard to publish to the App Store".

This contradicted Apple's claim that the FlickType keyboard offered a "poor user experience".

As a result, FlickType's revenue nosedived from $130,000 in its first month to just $20,000 as users noted for "better-rated" similar apps on App Store.

Eleftheriou has become famous for spotting "egregious scams" on the App Store, at a time when Apple has realigned several of its policies to benefit app developers.

Apple has brought back the "Report a Problem" button on the App Store.

The company also updated its App Store guidelines to purge fraud and scams by removing scamsters.

--IANS

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