Letter to Edmund King, President of the AA

Dear Edmund King, aka @AApresident,

I am replying in reference to your tweet on 3rd April:

Stardotstar build delightful interactive content, tools and toys that improve people’s lives. This is something we’ve been doing since 2001 and there’s nothing we love more than receiving the comments and feedback we get from our clients and customers.

As you may or may not be aware, earlier this year we released the first UK-wide car park location iPhone app: Nosey Parker. The app has been very well received, at one point we made it to position 21 in the UK App Store. For nearly a week we were selling more apps about car parks than Jamie Oliver was about cooking! But we weren’t quite selling as many apps about er… you know what, as the ‘Sex Positions Game’, but never mind.

As a user-centred company who thrive on making things better and better for our customers, we welcome healthy competition. So it was with mixed emotions that I saw that the AA Parking app had been released on April Fool’s Day. The very fact that your app exists has prompted us to get on with our next phase of enhancements to Nosey Parker – your app will therefore make our customers happier, sooner. Thanks.

However, what we didn’t expect was to type in the name of our app in the App Store search engine and see your app. There are only three elements that are queried when someone searches in the app store: the app name, the developer’s name and the keywords, and the Apple guidelines make it clear that using other apps’ names in your keywords is not allowed.

We understand that you would like a piece of our pie, but piggy backing on our app’s success by using our brand name is not fair game. We therefore formally ask you to remove all references to our app in your keywords with immediate effect.

With regard to your comment about getting a life, we all have very happy lives thank you, but thanks for your concern.

We appreciate your immediate co-operation in resolving this matter (the keyword matter; not the getting a life matter).

Best regards,

Gareth Langley
Director of Business Development.
3rd April 2010.

UPDATE: talking to the developer directly about removing references to our app from their keywords.

UPDATE 2: forgot to wish Edmund a Happy Easter back. Happy Easter Edmund.

UPDATE 3: Edmund King apologised for upset but makes out that ‘Get a Life’ meant please explain the problem… Mmm… :-/

UPDATE 4: Parkopedia have confirmed it was their error and apologised

UPDATE 5: We have just asked Parkopedia to remove their app from the app store until the issue is rectified.

UPDATE 6: Parkopedia have confirmed this morning (6th April 2010) that the latest version of their app is now live without referencing Nosey Parker. An apology from @AApresident and hopefully now normal service can now be resumed. Just a quick thanks to all of the support over the weekend, especially the 100s of comments on Twitter.