“Berlin public transportation company BVG has banned a popular iPhone application which helps to navigate the city’s vast metro system with over 170 stations,” Jan Libbenga reports for The Register. “Meanwhile, in the Netherlands Dutch Rail is threatening a student who developed a nifty train timetable for the iPhone. Both BVG and Dutch Rail claim the apps violate their copyright.”
“The German iPhone App Fahr-Info-Berlin was developed by 21-year-old student Jonas Witt, and has been downloaded over 20,000 times from the iTunes App Store since it first appeared in July,” Libbenga reports.
“When BVG began to notice its popularity, it told Witt to remove the app from iTunes because of copyright issues,” Libbenga reports. “BVG also said it plans to develop its own version of the application soon.”
More details in the full article here.
MacDailyNews Note: Unsurprising, since similar cases happened years ago in San Francisco and New York City. See: Subway authorities send ‘cease and desist’ letters to free iPod subways maps site owner – October 01, 2005