In October, 2013 we released ShutterCount, the world’s first Canon EOS shutter count reader app for the Mac. Six months later another app appeared on the Mac App Store, whose appearance, messages and web site showed eerie resemblance to ours. While keeping an eye on EOS Inspector, we continued to innovate further, bringing exciting new features to our customers.
Stemming from two years of research, ShutterCount scored another first in June, 2017 with the ability to work with new Canon cameras having a radically new counter mechanism.
A year later we were shocked to find that version 2 of EOS Inspector (subsequently renamed to ShutterCheck), which Konstantin Pavlikhin began selling at the time, went far beyond visual similarity and was in fact – as it has been established by evidence-based independent copyright expert opinion – based on key intellectual property illegally obtained from our app.
We strongly believe in competition, but do not tolerate intellectual property theft. We are determined to pursue our rights even if legal processes take a long time – just like in this case.
On November 16, 2020 Apple received the evidence-based independent copyright expert opinion referred to above that states that the infringement indeed takes place:
“This conduct (of Mr. Pavlikhin) – with regard to the unlawful acts of use – infringes the legitimate interests of the Hungarian software’s author and does not meet the requirements of fair conduct.”
Since Mr. Pavlikhin demonstrated no interest in stopping this purposeful infringement, Apple pulled his app from the Mac App Store on December 9, 2020.
We applaud this decision, as it shows Apple’s respect for original innovations of hard-working creative people.
