Nearly six months ago we told you about Kosta Eleftheriou, the developer of FlickType. The latter is a QWERTY keyboard app for the Apple Watch. The developer said that Apple wanted to purchase FlickType to use as a native keyboard for the wearable. But when he turned Apple down, things started to get ugly and Eleftheriou said that Apple then started to allow copycat rivals to roam free in the App Store.
Kosta’s theory is that Apple allowed FlickType’s rivals in the App Store to damage his app’s standing among Apple Watch keyboard apps so that revenue would decline and pressure Elefteriou to sell the app to Apple at a lower price. The developer sued Apple and in the court papers that he filed, this theory was explained thusly: “Evidently, Apple thought Plaintiff would simply give up and sell its application to Apple at a discount.”
Apple removed the app from the App Store for a period of time, and also rejected another version of the app that would take notes. Apple has denied the claims made by Eleftheriou in his lawsuit, and yesterday while unveiling the Apple Watch Series 7, the tech giant introduced QuickPath. This is a QWERTY keyboard that allows Apple Watch users to type by tapping on the keyboard’s letters or swipe to select a letter. The company’s Machine Learning predicts the word that the user is trying to type.
So now we know. See you in court, @Apple. https://t.co/hJtPI2Z83Jpic.twitter.com/1s7MUSLTpc
— Kosta Eleftheriou (@keleftheriou) September 14, 2021
So after yesterday’s California Streaming event and the introduction of the QuickPath feature for the Apple Watch Series 7, Eleftheriou tweeted Apple and wrote, “See you in court.” The developer says that he wasn’t referring to a new lawsuit but was commenting on the suit that had already been filed before Apple introduced QuickPath yesterday.
The tweet contained a letter from Apple dating back to 2019 when FlickType had been removed from the App Store by Apple for the reasons stated in the letter. Apple did reinstate FlickType and promoted it last year during a “Top Apps of 2020” promotion.
