[Tomte]

The other "official app" ("Corona Warn App") is also not developed by the government or any government-employed developers. That distinction is no distinction.

"Official" means that the government has adopted it and given it a special status.

The federal government and state governments have endorsed the Corona Warn App. No special privileges in lockdown are connected to it. No special use by public health authorities is made of it.

Several state governments and municipal government have endorsed (and bought licenses to!) the Luca app. Special privileges in lockdown are connected with it, not everywhere, but in many places. Public health authorities are directly connected to Luca's servers.

If anything, the Luca app is more official than Corona Warn App where it's in use (several German states), and poised to become more important as more states introduce it.

[realityking]

There is a big difference between commissioning a product (work for hire) and buying a product that has been already developed.

The federal government actually owns the IP of the Corona Warn App. Luca is merely licensed by various state and local governments. You can’t expect the buyer of a software to assume responsibility for copyright violations. It’s like blaming someone for a (hypothetical) copyright violation in Windows because they sell a server that has Windows pre-installed.

[IG_Semmelweiss]

>>> You can’t expect the buyer of a software to assume responsibility for copyright violations

Yes you can. Certainly true in the US. Liability depends on state law and in how the contract is written. If the buyer did not specifically make that carve out, a judge may end up deciding.

If the seller specifically carved that in, the buyer can be liable too (along with the seller).

This is why most government entities are difficult to contract with. They have buyers that insist in specific contract language. Govt entities have templates preapproved by lawyers to prevent this sort of thing coming back to haunt them. So if you want to do business with the govt, that's the hoops you will need to jump over.