Siri Says

David’s success with the fake iphone app had me thinking of a fake Siri app for android. You would probably get taken down for copyright. I was thinking you could make the Fake Siri app say funny things, like when you ask her which is the best phone. She would say Galaxy Nexus or some android phone. You could make funny responses to all kinds of questions. Ask her whats she wearing and she replies “Nothing at all” or swear at her and she swears back lol.

Such “talk robots” are as old as computers themselves - noone can harm you with any copyright issues xD

But would using the name Fake Siri get you in trouble?

Their are a few apps with Siri in it, a couple of which have a significant amount of downloads.

Potentially yes - but no-one cares as long as original siri is not available for android it is just free advertisement for siri.

If Siri comes to android they will kick them out anyway.

For siri-fake - i am not a lawyer - I think you have good chances to survive as long as the user does not believe you are the original siri - I mean, you CAN use the word “siri” for descriptional purposes of the function of your app but you have to make clear, that it IS NOT siri xD

Laws are complicated and when in trouble you need only a little bit of knowlegde about it (in europe … where many lawyers are not more than secretaries used to do paperwork, you need to know that by yourself)

But to be honest: If Siri demands the deletion of your app, google will follow them

That’s one of the reasons my app Fake iPhone 4S is named in such a way. :slight_smile:

There are quite a number of Siri apps out there for Android. I guess the idea from @XdebugX is still original, in terms of bringing a slightly different sense of humour to Siri. But the general idea’s pretty well used already (as most good ideas are!)

I have seen a number of apps on Google Play for Star Wars themed stuff - often times using graphics.

What is the legal situation for such apps ?

Can one use a character’s name - if it is a voice changing app for that character for instance. There already are apps for that and they seem to use images as well for the character and haven’t been taken down yet.

What should one do to avoid problems later in this regard - I was thinking making a generic figure that somehow represents the figure.

I could use the name of the character I suppose - but was concerned about use of a hand drawn graphic that represents the character as potentially causing problems later.

there is no legal situation because noone of them will have a license to use anything from “star wars” - if lucas arts goes crazy everyone will be taken down or sued.

If you want to be on the save side - just do not use graphics from them (with exceptions) and never ever use the word “star wars” in your apps name and such things - you will need a license to sell “star wars” stuff.

You can of course use the word “star wars” as a descriptive part i.e. describing the functions of your app (as far as I know that is always legal if it is the best way to describe the function) - avoid that anyone could think you are making an “official star wars whatsovever app”

As far as I know you can also draw your own dog on 2 feet and call him chubacca (is that spelled right?) but if it is the chubacca from star wars (clearly without any doubt) you are not allowed to do so.

Thanks for the reply.

Yes, I will have to do something about the graphic - that it is suggestive but clearly does not look fully like the original character.

But I suspect use of the name of the character is allowable if it describes the intent of the app - which is the mimic the voice of that particular character.

Since the functionality of the app is being offered by audio processing essentially (with no use of proprietary audio), the only thing left to do is to ensure the graphics are clean and unencumbered.

I wonder if adding the word “unofficial” to the title will add anything (or just take up valuable space that could be used for a better keyword).

Use of one part of the character’s name in the title - as it is a voice changer to make people speak like that character - would I expect be “fair use”.

As long as there is no suggestion that it is an official app.

Certain forms of expression are considered to be fair use, and not violations of copyrights. Parodies and satires can sometimes fall into this category.

This is discussed in wikipedia here:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fair_use

Disclaimer: I am also not a lawyer. :slight_smile:

It’s not interesting for people…

Hahaha i want that siri app…