[gcheong]

Section 6.3 of the contract includes this text:

“In the event that Apple refunds any such price to an end-user, You shall reimburse, or grant Apple a credit for, an amount equal to the price for that Licensed Application. Apple will have the right to retain its commission on the sale of that Licensed Application, notwithstanding the refund of the price to the end-user.”

[icey]

Retaining the right to keep their commission is not remotely the same thing as forcing developers to pay back Apple 100% of the sale amount, including paying back Apple's commission amount.

My guess is that they are including this in their contracts to allow for punitive actions in cases of things like the $999 "I am Rich app".

Of course, there's still the chance that I'm completely wrong and Apple is intentionally trying to scare developers away from a fledgling platform and towards Palm's WebOS and Android; but I think it's a bit silly to get up in arms about this until there's something more detailed than the parsing of somewhat unclear contractual terms.

(Also, thank you for showing us the section that they're talking about!)

[mustpax]

You're probably right. But there's a bigger problem here: big corporations make the consumer (the developer in this case) sign the most onerous contract imaginable and say "oh, we'd never enforce it that way."

When the poop hits the fan, they have all the legal leeway they want to strong arm you and you cannot do jack. My favorite example of this is the forced arbitration clauses, where you consent not to even go to court.

The average consumer does not have sufficient access access to legal counsel to enter into such contracts prudently.

This whole arrangement is a slap in the face of equal protection under law principle. The relative cost of legal representation for a large corporate entity is nothing compared to me trying to get legal opinion on my AT&T contract (shudder).

[eob]

I couldn't agree more.

Laws & rules are worthless unless enforced equally and absolutely. Once the cops start deciding /when/ to enforce a law, a country is no better than a lawless one.

This is just the contractual parallel to that situation.

Is this part of the contract new or has it been in there all along. I'll be the first to admit to clicking the "Accept" button having only read blog articles about the terms, but not the terms themselves.

[eob]

Perhaps there should be a return policy attached to every app.

It seems that a fair argument can be made for both cases: some apps are clearly $1 disposable toys, while others are $50 business apps. It seems entirely appropriate to have a return policy for the latter category, but not the former.

[icey]

In my opinion, this is the true issue at hand - clauses like this in contracts are commonplace; and most people are probably unaware of it until they have to litigate for some reason, or are hit with ridiculous fees.

[gcheong]

I agree. Time will tell just to what extent Apple intends to exercise their rights.