To explain that part of the Lanham Act in your business card analogy, no, you could not take my image and put it on your business card. You could, however, take that image and use it to identify me in a purely informational context, as long as there was proper notification.

How else do you think Pepsi uses Coke logos in their commercials, or Jobs himself used the Windows NT logo or that Windows mobile screenshot in old Macworld presentations? It is not infringement to use logos or images in an informational context, and never has been.

You and LaMarche are both missing three things.

1) Those images are not just for a response to Mac software. They are a response for a query about capabilities from a device connected on the network. In other words, you are incorrect on that point. LaMarche concedes these are publicly available, though he ignores the implications.

2) Neither you nor LaMarche deal with the fact that this sort of use — purely to identify the holder of the trademark and their products — is specifically and explicitly not trademark infringement under the terms of the Lanham Act. In other words, his “Bayer” analogy is completely irrelevant, because under federal law such use is not infringement.

3) Even if you conveniently ignore federal law and claim this was infringing, by not protecting the assets at the point of delivery, Apple has committed inaction that renders those specific assets unprotected, by your own logic.

Again, Apple has the right to do whatever they want in their store. But they cannot pretend the law compels them to act, when it is simply their own provincial attitudes.

What I mean is Apple should give the reviewing a bit of slack and focus more on enhancing the search/rating system in the App store.

Apple and developer;

“here’s my App, will it be one the App store soon?”

“computer says ‘NO’”

“is there anything I can do on to make you accept it?”

“computer says ‘NO’”

“is there something wrong with it?”

“computer says ‘NO’”

“have you actually tried the App?”

“computer says ‘NO’”

“do you care about developers?”

“computer says ‘NO’”

“would you like if I wasted three months of your business’ time?”

“computer says ‘NO’”

“would you care if half your developers abandoned you?”

“computer says ‘NO’”

I think Jeff LaMarche’s newest post covers it well.

http://iphonedevelopment.blogspot.com/2009/11/my-last-word-on-rogue-amoeba.html

(He reminded me that he is in fact a lawyer, though not for IP stuff. Still, much less armchair-y that I’ve been.)

Short version, maybe I’m missing something. My understanding is that those images are theoretically to be provided as part of a call by Mac software, not by just any software. That is, the license to display request/accept the image from the contacted machine is part of the Mac OS X development license? That’s my understanding of it, though I’m open to being corrected.

What it’s not a part of is the iPhone development license.

My armchair lawyering is weak. I know there’s specific law (or just rulings, actually) about images provided for public consumption on the internet. I know I couldn’t take that image you linked to and put it on my business card, just because it was available to my web browser.