Android App Development Question

This belongs in the business section. Personally I don't know what you're doing or what it's based on, I would assume you would need some sort of permission to use someone else's IP.

Good Luck

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Original post by Uziel2101 This belongs in the business section. Personally I don't know what you're doing or what it's based on, I would assume you would need some sort of permission to use someone else's IP. Good Luck

My bad about the section, figured it would be fine in general coding. I would rather not give out any information on what specific site it is or what exactly it will be doing, but thanks for the input! =D

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Just to clarify some things up. All our app would do is exactly what their website does, but in an easier format then their site looks on a droid. So basically, we're just making it easier for people to use their site.

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Original post by Gordo4444 I see a lot of 3rd party Facebook apps that have different layouts and such, did they all get permission from Facebook to do so or did they just do it?

If they interact with Facebook API, then yes. There is plenty of documentation available on restrictions and terms of use.

If they just scrape stuff, then they can get shut down at any time, or break whenever something changes.

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All our app would do is exactly what their website does, but in an easier format then their site looks on a droid. So basically, we're just making it easier for people to use their site.

How are you getting the content? By scraping? Are you respecting robots.txt? RSS or atom feed? API? All of these define terms of use.

And this question is very suspicious. Why are you making app for some third-party site? Usually it's site owner that asks for an app to be developed.

In worst case they can claim violation of copyright or similar infringement.

Note that this is not a new or even clever idea. On iPhone there were shops which were producing dozens of such apps a week, flooding the store until Apple banned the companies. In general, unless you have permission to redistribute the content, it's not wise to do so.

This is especially true for paid applications.

Moving to Business/Law.


I agree that what you're doing sounds like a Bad Thing™.

Regardless of the legal facts the only sane way to proceed will be to get permission. If you don't you may end up in a back and forth struggle with the website making changes to their site to stop your app accessing their info and you having to keep updating the app to make it work. This happened in the instant messaging world where companies tried to make their apps compatible with AIM and AOL kept trying to prevent them.

Many sites like Facebook welcome developers - provided they follow set procedures/use the API provided. However a lot of content is protected by copyright and accessing without permission would potentially land you in trouble.

Conclusion: save yourself the grief - ask first.

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Original post by Gordo4444 I see a lot of 3rd party Facebook apps that have different layouts and such, did they all get permission from Facebook to do so or did they just do it?

They had to work with Facebook and obey the Facebook 3rd party development rules, which are always changing.