Dublin Bikes app pulled due to “threat of legal action by JC Decaux”
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Twitter was abuzz earlier this afternoon with the news that the extremely handy iPhone App for the Dublin Bike scheme was no longer available.
Fusio, in a brief note on their website said:
Due to the threat of legal action from J.C. Decaux the Dublin Bikes iPhone App is no longer available to download and there will be no further updates posted. Thank you for all the positive feedback and comments.
I’ve used the application and it’s very handy. Using the iPhone’s geo location feature it will pinpoint the closest bike point to your location. It’s based on Google map information on the Dublin Bike website.
In the absence of any information from Fusio I took it upon myself to ring JC Decaux to find out about this “threat of legal action” but I could not get an official comment. One or two people on Twitter have emailed the company as well to find out what the problem is.
I reckon the use of the colour scheme and similarity of the logo to the Dublin Bike logo and website colour scheme is what JC Decaux are taking issue with. I wouldn’t be surprised if the “threat of legal action” turns out to be a request to use a different ‘look and feel’ to the opening splash screen – and it shouldn’t be any big problem to change those.
There can’t be any other grounds for the “threat”. Dublin Bikes isn’t a registered company or business name, the map data is on Google maps so that only leaves the colour and logo.
Will be watching with interest for further developments on this.
Any articles/blog posts/photos/stuff of interest I could blog about here ? Send the link direct to my iPhone now
5 Comments
September 23rd, 2009 at 10:22 am
it might be worth noting that they have not been in touch with me yet They haven’t been in touch with me yet. I’m the one behind http://dublinbikes.mobi. My site operates in much the same way as the app (though it works on all phones, not just the iPhone.) Perhaps they haven’t heard about it yet.
I think that as a general guiding principle, services such as this that were paid for with public money, and are for the public, ought to make their data public & resuable also to foster innovation. In the case of dublinbikes.ie the data is public but it seems that its re-use is frowned upon.
September 23rd, 2009 at 11:20 am
Hope they don’t start squashing everything – as you say, public space on the streets was graciously provided to these people in the first place – really silly of them to demonise anyone who re-uses the data.
September 25th, 2009 at 2:27 am
According to someone I spoke to in Dublin City Council they had a message from the PR department to say that a new app will be launching in the next 2 weeks….whats the bets Decaux launch their own app and charge for it !!!!
September 26th, 2009 at 9:34 pm
did you see the eirtext app vs 02 story, that was about image, with this jcdecuax said you can’t use our info,
February 23rd, 2010 at 11:11 am
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