Another Cease and Desist Notice

The other day I noticed that there were now only two World of Warcraft related native iPhone / iPod Touch applications on the iTunes App Store. Just a couple weeks ago there were actually four.

The first to receive a cease and desist notice from Blizzard was Armory Browser and it was pulled from the iTunes App Store on August 25, 2008. It appears that a second cease and desist notice went out to Zevo Inc., the developers of Warcraft Arena Calculator since that application was just pulled from the App Store a couple days ago. The people at Zevo Inc., hasn't actually posted anything about it on their website, but when I sent an email to them, I got a short reply which said that it violated Blizzard's intellectual property and was infringing on their copyright.

It's interesting as the remaining two applications available on the App Store are, Warcraft Characters [iTunes link] and WarcraftStat [iTunes link], are offered for free. The two that have been removed had charged money for the application. Though they were both charging only 99 cents (US) they still were charging nonetheless. As I suspected earlier, I believe it's because Blizzard is taking issue with someone charging for an application that basically accessed their freely provided service (the official WoW Armory). I'm still wondering if these applications were provided for free if Blizzard would still want them to cease and desist?

I had thought at one point that perhaps Blizzard was going after any WoW related iPhone / iPod Touch application because they were going to make their own, but the fact that Warcraft Characters and WarcraftStat are still available leads me to believe that it really was because those developers were charging money.

Let's hope Blizzard doesn't also go after the free applications!