You have, perhaps, been taking additional fiber since you heard about the iPhone farting-app litigation.
iFart was fingered by Pull My Finger for using a phrase redolent of nothing more than a very happy night among very sad people.
I can now reveal that the evil odor is over. Fresher air has prevailed. The two farting apps have partaken of a peace pipe and declared the spat to have blown over. They have even created a new app to prove that the air is now safe to breathe.
(Credit:
iFart and Pull My Finger)
However, should you have not had so much as a sniff of these happenings, please let me throw caution to the wind and explain.
You see, many inspiring minds have been dedicated to creating the most fragrant farting apps. Yet the chaps at Air-o-Matic (why didn't they call the company Air-o-Mantic?) decided to release lawyers upon the alleged bums at InfoMedia, the makers of iFart.
"You're pulling our legs, if you use the phrase 'pull my finger'," the Airheads might have said. "We have the trademark."
Yet the infidels from Infomedia contended that the phrase was part of the language. As steam rose from each company's base, no one could be sure if these fine conglomerates would be able to smell the roses.
Even our generation's Walter Cronkite, Jon Stewart of "The Daily Show," failed to exert the principles of Camp David upon these purveyors of stench warfare.
So how nostril-positive it is to hear that the noxiousness has been replaced by a joint app created in one corporate bathroom.
Yes, let us welcome the Clear The Air app, which is being offered free to all iPhone and iPod Touch finger pullers.
Clear the Air, the product of some brilliant 30,000-foot thinking, offers you four methods to make the oxygen around you more uplifting. You can turn on a desk fan, spray a little deodorizer, open a window, or even push your finger on an aircon button.
This vastly imaginative solution is proof that any dispute can be solved, once you create the right atmosphere.
While declaring that letting the lawyers win in litigation was clearly beneath both companies, InfoMedia's Joel Comm went on to suggest in a press release that it was "more in the spirit of humanity to find a way to work together".
What a lovely day it is, when the bottom falls out of a lawyer's fees.
The maker of iPhone app iFart Mobile has taken rival Air-O-Matic to court over the rights to use the term "pull my finger."
(Credit: InfoMedia)The iPhone farting app market is starting to get pretty noisy.
iFart Mobile, maker of an app that simulates farting noises, asked a court on Friday to rule that it can use the term "pull my finger" without risking trademark infringement claims by another iPhone fart app named, you guessed it, Pull My Finger.
InfoMedia, which developed iFart Mobile, filed a complaint for declaratory judgment in Colorado District Court and named rival Air-O-Matic as defendant.
In a blog posting, InfoMedia said it filed the complaint after an attorney for Air-O-Matic asked the company to pay $50,000 to its rival for using the terminology.
Air-O-Matic had also complained to Apple that InfoMedia was guilty of unfair business practices and trademark infringement because it used the term "pull my finger" in a news release and YouTube promo video. Air-O-Matic also asked that iFart Mobile be removed from the iPhone App Store, but Apple told the companies to work it out among themselves.
In its filing with the court, InfoMedia claims the term "pull my finger" is common English slang and a "descriptive phrase" and therefore not covered by trademark.
"I've got nothing against the people who make Pull My Finger. In my opinion, their app was inferior to ours," InfoMedia's Joel Comm wrote in the blog post. "As a matter of good will, I changed the press release the very same day they contacted me. I have also changed the name of the video to show that there are no hard feelings."
Representatives from Air-O-Matic could not be reached for comment on the filing, and their lawyer did not immediately return a call and e-mail seeking comment Friday evening.
The iPhone fart app market is nothing to hold your nose over. There are at least 75 different flatulence simulation software apps on the App Store, according to InfoMedia's filing.
I don't know which company is in the right here, but frankly, this whole mess stinks.
Apple apparently doesn't think fart jokes are very funny.
The developer of Pull My Finger, an iPhone application, told MacRumors that Apple decided to reject his application from the App Store because it was "of limited utility to the broad iPhone and iPod touch user community." Pull My Finger does pretty much what you would expect it to do, generating about five or six different sounds of flatulence from your iPhone depending on your preference.
Regardless of whether you think fart jokes are the linchpin of comedy (we're running roughly half and half right now in an informal internal poll), MacRumors poses the interesting question of what exactly it means for an iPhone application to have "utility."
Koi Pond, the top-selling iPhone application in the App Store, doesn't do much beyond letting you look at pretty waterscapes with colorful fish on your iPhone. And some of the applications on Josh Lowensohn's recent list of absurd iPhone applications aren't exactly searching for a cure for cancer or helping old ladies cross the street.
When Apple announced it would be vetting every application submitted for inclusion in the App Store, this was just the kind of question that entered many a mind: just how arbitrary would the company be in wielding that veto power? While the rejection of Pull My Finger isn't going to rattle people's cages the way that NetShare's execution did, it's still an interesting question that Apple hasn't exactly stepped forward to answer, though we've gotten a hint with the rejections of applications such as the "I am rich" application.
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