Hello again,
On August 11th I was kindly invited to present at an iPhone and Smartphone Developers and publishers meetup (http://bit.ly/3yuE1) in London. It was a very well arranged event organised by Jason Dunne (thanks!) with a about 45-50 people attending. I was told that this was the largest meetup so far which was nice. 
Anyway, I ran through Vodafone’s plans for widgets and the appstore and work around JIL (www.jil.org) and it was generally well received although if I’m honest Vodafone are still seen as the evil empire for a lot of developers! 
One of the questions I received was around IP ownership and whether Vodafone is in the business of using ideas created by the ecosystem to create their own apps and services. The answer is a resounding NO. :-) There are 2 ways to prove this:
1. If you look at the Betavine app competitions such as Summer Of Widgets you’ll see that the T&Cs have always said the IP remains with the developer.
2. Vodafone isn’t interested in chasing IP as it’s not part of our core business and we simply don’t have the resources to chase all the apps! Yes there are many lawyers in the company but none that I have met here are interested in IP ownership and infringement.
This discussion also led onto IP ownership and how to protect interests and a lot of it led towards software patenting and ensuring that developers are aware that this is something that should be looked into. Bear in mind that although a vast majority of the ecosystem isn’t into IP infringement, there may well be an app that is created one day that unknowlingly uses IP owned by someone else. This means clarity around apps and IP should be considered during the software development process. Yes it’s another piece of work to add to our already hectic lives but it should be considered if you’re worried about this kind of thing.
There was also discussion around Vodafones efforts on working with standards bodies. We’re heavily involved with W3C and are working with other standards bodies such as OMTP and BONDI to ensure we minimise fragmentation in this space. If you need more info then drop us a line (via the comments section) and we’ll let you know more.
All in all it was a good event and I look forward to the next one. The beer helped too!
Now, back to work!
Sanj
