A touch-screen legal battle has ended between the Metropolitan Transportation Authority and a Greenwich-based software developer concerning application content and neither is writing any penalty checks.
StationStops.com has returned to its iPhone application status after dealing with intellectual property claims from the New York MTA that have now been resolved.
“The conflict between MTA and StationStops was a necessary evil in order to publicly discuss the issues involving MTA’s representation of its intellectual property in the swiftly evolving mobile space,” said Chris Schoenfeld, founder and developer of StationStops.
The commuter advocacy blog and purchasable application can now again be found at the Apple iTunes App Store.
Many applications or software tools are developed by third-party individuals for Apples successful iPhone device, a capability envisioned by Steve Jobs in 2007.
Schoenfeld, a Greenwich resident, is an independent mobile software developer and entrepreneur doing business as Camel and Penguin Consulting. He has more than 15 years”™ experience in internet software development for the likes of Hewlett-Packard, Scudder Kemper Investments, the U.S. Department of Justice, Yahoo!, About.com, and others.
Apple reinstated the Station application in response to a priority request from the New York MTA, which retracted its previous intellectual property claims against the application. The application offered iPhone users viewable MTA schedules.
Â
In August, negotiations between StationStops and MTA seeking a licensing agreement for transit data broke down, resulting in MTA Marketing and Legal departments sending a “cease and desist” order to Apple. The document claimed that StationStops for iPhone was infringing on MTA intellectual property in the absence of a licensing deal, resulting in Apple removing the app from the iTunes store.
Â
StationStops refuted the claims and over the course of two months, the case attracted the attention of intellectual property lawyers, software developers and legal scholars nationwide.
“MTA has publicly stated that it wishes to reconsider its approach to mobile application development and I applaud them for this turnaround,” said Schoenfeld. “This has been accompanied by additional gestures of meaningful action, but there is still much more to be done.” ?Schoenfeld said the MTA is a massive transit service with serious budgetary concerns and, as incoming CEO Jay Walder has identified, is sorely lacking in real-time information delivery to its customers.
“By simply publishing their existing schedule database and other information online, as other major transit agencies have done, outside developers have the ability to fill massive gaps in real-time customer information for MTA at little or no cost, in a timeframe MTA could never realize internally,” said Schoenfeld.
There was no monetary or other compensation involved in the settlement, although StationStops, in a good faith gesture to the MTA, agreed to make edits to its existing disclaimer language on the application’s iTunes homepage.
Schoenfeld said he will continue his work to improve MTA data policy through the New York Data Transit Summit, a group of transit developers and passenger-advocacy interests who seek meaningful discussion with the MTA on the subject of data services.
