They now need to raise a case with apple that the Chinese company have cloned their game and get the clone taken down, regardless of what they call it.
It appears the Chinese appropriation is only valid in China and probably anywhere else the developers didn't register the trademark. So it would seem they have every right to sell the game in China and there's nothing Apple can do about that.
If it is actually a clone I'm pretty certain Apple has store rules that allow them to "do something about that". It's Apple's store, not the Chinese.
With Apple making money from the clone it does becomes a business decision, and the current political weather adds another sticking point. IMO they won't remove it despite rules that might dictate otherwise. In fact the Chinese might deem this a great opportunity to demand more "cooperation" from Apple as a condition of at least partially shielding them from repercussions over the trade war. Apple is on unfriendly seas there IMHO and won't rocking the boat at all.
I doubt the Chinese government is going to go all in with the US President for a cloned game that makes a few thousand dollars per month at best.
I had to read the article twice to figure out who was infringing whom and who was cloning what. Andrew’s sentence structure in this article is decidedly unconventional.
They now need to raise a case with apple that the Chinese company have cloned their game and get the clone taken down, regardless of what they call it.
It appears the Chinese appropriation is only valid in China and probably anywhere else the developers didn't register the trademark. So it would seem they have every right to sell the game in China and there's nothing Apple can do about that.
If it is actually a clone I'm pretty certain Apple has store rules that allow them to "do something about that
Well, if is the operative word. I may have missed that in the article, but it wouldn't have to be a clone to make money. It appears the Dev's game name has some cachet, so as in the early days of the App Store when unethical devs would make a different game with the exact same name as an already existing, successful app, close enough was good enough to make some bucks at the original dev's expense.
If it is a clone, I wonder what Apple can do. The 'clone' is trademarked but not in the US or Canada, according to the article. So that mean the Dev can't sell the game in China even with a name change.
Cook is accused of kowtowing (kau tau) to China and gets a lot of grief for it. I don't think that's a fair or accurate assessment, but it'll be interesting to see how this shakes out.
The developer claims it's a clone, but he does have a dog in the fight. "Despite explaining this as clear as I could to Apple and the 3rd party, Apple sided with the cloners and took my game down," said Playsaurus CEO Thomas Wolfley.
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"Despite explaining this as clear as I could to Apple and the 3rd party, Apple sided with the cloners and took my game down," said Playsaurus CEO Thomas Wolfley.