Dear fellow LEGO-fans,
The LEGO Group asked us to remove our LEGO Hobby iPhone application from the Apple App Store.
In their Fair Use Policy on LEGO.com the LEGO Group mentions they are the exclusive worldwide copyright owner for the LEGO® Building Instructions. The Building Instructions may not be reproduced, in any form whether physical or electronic, without the express permission of the LEGO Group. Of course we respect this, but it is no secret that the LEGO Group allows the operators of certain web sites the reproduction of LEGO Building Instructions. As we now know for mobile platforms this is something else...
The fact that the LEGO Group does not currently offer the Building Instructions for a mobile platform does not mean that others like Speak BV may step in and provide this service. Surely disappointing for us, especially because we see no difference in content for mobile platforms (like iPhone applications) and content for website. From our point of view it is exactly the same. But of course we can only respect the copyrights owned by the LEGO Group.
So to keep the LEGO Hobby App available to you fellow LEGO fans, we offered the LEGO Group our App and its source code... for free! To our great surprise and disappointment they rejected our offer... at this point. We will keep contact with the LEGO people in Danmark and the USA. When the LEGO Group gets to the point where they wish to provide a mobile application Speak BV is in the spotlight and wouldn't that be nice?!
To be continued...
Speak BV
PS. Also our $650 LEGO price draw is affected by this. But we will contact all the participants and of course there will be a winner!