iPhone beer maker sues Carling over virtual suds An iPhone app developer is suing the Molson Coors Brewing company for over $12.5m in damages for allegedly copying his $3 novelty beer-pouring application and offering it on iTunes for free. Steve Sheraton, operator of Nevada-based Hottrix, claims the idea for his iBeer app was illegitimately lifted by the brewing conglomerate …
It wasn't even his original idea. He stole it from that illusionist on youtube who had the beer drinking video super imposed on an iphone outside an apple store on the iphone launch day. You'll remember him as the guy that kept saying "amazing" in the most annoying way. "Look at my new iphone it does some aaaaammmmmaaazzzing things".
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I have heard of similar cases, where a big firm offers to buy a license for a product, pays a few pence in royalties for a short while, reverse engineers it and then makes it's own version and tells the original developer to bugger off. (Microsoft comes to mind). After all, how many little guys are willing or able to take on the thousands of lawyers these big firms can deploy??
By refusing he avoided any small print malarkey Apple's lawyers may have tried to insert into the contract.
More evidence that Ad agencies have little or no originality - Beattie , McGuiness and Bungay one of London's top creative boutiques developed the app for Carling which in case people don't know is pure urine anyway !More evidence that Ad agencies have little or no originality - Beattie , McGuiness and Bungay one of London's top creative boutiques developed the app for Carling which in case people don't know is pure urine anyway !
As someone else commented above, Carling tastes like p*ss, is horrible and just made from chemicals. In the UK, cheap beer like this is what causes violence outside pubs at closing time.
If the UK copied the german purity laws, im sure there would be less trouble ...but that's never gonna happen.
I mean... come on.... Virtual Beer????? Why would you want to pretend to drink beer.... well then again it was ripped off by a well known peddler of Canoe beer*.......
Didnt bring a coat today... I'll just head to the pub.....
* Like making love in a canoe - F$*king close to water....
working on the simulated five finger shuffle for the potentiometer, somewhat sort of like, but obviously not like, those pens you turn upside down. And someone does a naff little beer pouring app and gets to sue a corporate, it is not fair I tell you.
Anyhow, he should be awarded a rate similar to TV advertising Saturday night on a major channel, which he should then have to pay to the original artist.
Ad Agencies do copy like the little cats of copying they are. No original ideas at all, they just steal;
oohh paper bag floating in the wind, I know I have an idea, no you don't you just saw a bag float in the wind, you are not creative, you are not your fucking khakis, you are the same decaying matter as everything else, you are the all singing dancing crap of the world. Oh and deliver me from Swedish furniture.
"6m downloads of ipint != 6m lost sales of ibeer" - it is if you use the MPAA method of loss accounting which i believe is the standard in the US.
Don't beat up on the small guy for this, he is only following the tried and tested examples of how to conduct business, as shown to us small guys by the market leaders.
Good for the goose etc...
Besides Ad agencies are scum mostly, so f*ck em, they ripped his idea now time to make their lawyers earn their retainer.
Who the feck would want to drink a virtual pint, albeit from an iPhone, anyway? What would happen if they virtually drank 12 virtual pints? Would they have a bit of virtual sick, go to a virtual pub, pull a virtual fat bird, have a virtual kebab on the way home, do a virtual drunken sex with aforementioned virtual fat bird before waking up in the (virtual) morning with a case of virtual nob rot and a virtual black eye from the virtual fight you had that you can't remember because your virtual memory is virtually blank?
Then you turn off the iPhone and realise you're still alone. Sat in your bedroom of your parents house, tissues thrown across the floor, legs akimbo and crying.
Hold on, that's a bloody good idea (the first bit). I'm off to writes me an iApp.
Reading the articale carefully: It seems as if that copyright holder had only copyrighted the Video of beer not the interactive stuff. Since iPint and iBeer were released at the same time (when the store first opened) then they must have done serperate R&D in order to make the interactive version (which is not copyrighted).
So there is no case to answer for ..
People, why the negativity? It's an original idea (until proved otherwise) and definitely has some "creative merit", so it meets the requirement for copyright. You might not fancy it but there's some pretty awful published poetry and you wouldn't argue that.
He pretty clearly had his idea ripped off by a large corporation, and it undeniably had some effect on his income (maybe not 12.5m, but someone, somewhere would have bought it). I'd say it's an obvious case of copyright infringement, and Carlings actions after his cease-and-desist would appear to back that up. Good luck to him.
>As someone else commented above, Carling tastes like p*ss, is horrible and just made from chemicals.
Name me something that ISN'T made from chemicals?
Away and drink your beardy-weirdy real ale with twigs and mud in it, from your suitably chunky pint glasses with a handle, and leave all the clean, fresh chemical-laden fizzy lager to the fucking experts.
As per Malcolm Hall's post above, it sounds like there is "prior art", therefore he will lose and probably have to pay a fortyune in costs.
I understand why you ask for 12m ... you hope to get at least 1m. A simple case of if you don't ask, you don't get, but in this case I doubt he will get anything. His only possible claim is to have popularised an unoriginal idea, which was later then further exploited by the brewery in question. However, I don't think you can expect to build a business model on just that when the implementation is so trivial and unprotected.
I sympathise slightly, but then I remember that he patented someone else's idea and refused to close a deal with the brewery, at which point every last shred of my sympathies evaporates faster than a pint of alcohol in the middle of the Goabi desert.
"No original ideas at all, they just steal;
oohh paper bag floating in the wind, I know I have an idea, no you don't you just saw a bag float in the wind, you are not creative, you are not your fucking khakis, you are the same decaying matter as everything else, you are the all singing dancing crap of the world. Oh and deliver me from Swedish furniture."
I think you may have stolen your rant from Chuck Palahniuk
It's the same bollocks that the record industry trots out. The numbers seem to be based on the assumption that everybody who downloaded the free app would have paid full whack for the other one were the free one not available.
Yeah right, and everybody who got Prince's last album free with their sunday paper would otherwise have rushed out and bought the CD. Pull the other one.
"It's an original idea (until proved otherwise)"
I don't think the law really works like that, does it? In order to win his $12.5 million bucks he has to prove that he had and original idea and that the ad agency ripped it off. You can't simply assume that he had the original idea because he said he did.
You may as well believe that anybody who is accused of any crime is guilty unless they can prove otherwise. Maybe you do.
"Ad Agencies do copy like the little cats of copying they are. No original ideas at all, they just steal;
oohh paper bag floating in the wind, I know I have an idea, no you don't you just saw a bag float in the wind, you are not creative"
On that basis nobody ever had an original idea. Everything anybody ever created or invented was inspired by prior experiences.
Nobdoy ever invented a machine without seeing something else (another machine, a bit of bovine anatomy, whatever) and thought hey if I took that and added one of these/extended that bit/removed that bit/etc.
Nobody ever wrote tune without hearing some other tune/noise that inspired it.
It's how the human mind works.
Why the icon? It's the one that looks most like a five finger shuffle, kind of apt for your post I thought.
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I think you'll find the first accelerometer-driven beer gag was PyPiwo on the N95, which was doing the rounds in early January 2008. This was presumably inspired by the iPhone video gag, which came earlier, I don't know. Oh, hang on, though, I forgot: those millions of Nokias don't count and the few hundred iPhones in the world are the ONLY mobile devices in the world worthy of discussion. How stupid of me.
What is the difference in concept between, let say...
Microsoft Office vs Open Office?
One you pay for, one is free and close enough to enable a user to recognise and us based on similar functionality and presentation (ok give or take?)
product differentiation and service tends to prevail in markets?
ahahahaha reminds me of:
If lies were cats you'd be a litter...
@Metalflakk - Becks Vier...
Jesus. The water they use to brew the stuff is a fucking chemical.
Erm, yes....H2O; and your point?
@Throatwobbler Mangrove - Saying "Tony Blair is a scumbag mofo" isn't either, because common abuse isn't defamation either). Isn't truth a defense?
got coat, going now for something to wet whistle
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