iFart Mobile takes Pull My Finger to court
My team and I came up with the idea for an iPhone fart application in summer of 2008. We knew it would be a hit. We just needed to develop it. — We took great pride in developing iFart Mobile. It was more than another iPhone application.
Context & Ripple Effects
iFart Mobile went from novelty to genuine business almost overnight — by late December it was pulling in nearly $10,000 a day on the App Store, making it one of the breakout hits of the early gold rush. That success turned its name and brand into real commercial property worth defending, which is exactly why the developer is now suing rival fart app Pull My Finger rather than shrugging off the copycat.
First-order effects
- The dispute moves from App Store competition to litigation: iFart Mobile's team claims it originated the iPhone fart-app idea back in summer 2008 and is asserting that priority against Pull My Finger, putting the rival's name and listing under direct legal threat.
- For both developers, court costs and legal exposure now hang over what had been a low-cost novelty business — a category where margins were built on volume, not lawyer budgets.
Second-order effects
- Other indie developers selling lookalike apps will have to think twice about naming and branding: if this suit gains traction, 'me-too' titles become legally risky, not just strategically derivative.
- The fight also spotlights Apple's gatekeeping role — with no arbitration mechanism inside the store, disputes between sellers spill outside it, and coverage of the case adds to developer frustration already visible in outlets like ARM ('Apple Rejected Me').
Third-order effects
- If the pattern holds, the App Store's novelty gold rush matures into a market where trademarks and name rights are contested assets — small shops start budgeting for legal defense the way established software companies always have.
- It also previews the recurring tension over who profits from ideas in Apple's ecosystem: from rejected-app grievance sites to later accusations like Apple allegedly ripping off a student's rejected app, the question of platform-side appropriation becomes a structural issue, not an anecdote.
The trend: This is an early data point in the App Store's shift from a wide-open novelty gold rush toward a mature marketplace where independent developers must defend intellectual property — against rivals and sometimes the platform itself.