Over the past few weeks, I have attempted to get Mayor Bloomberg’s and Governor David Paterson’s offices to speak regarding the MTA’s frivolous litigation against mobile application developers like StationStops. I have spoken in person to both Governor Jodi Rell and Governor David Paterson’s press offices requesting a statement, but have received no call back [...]

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Apple has removed StationStops for iPhone from the iTunes App Store in response to a false copyright infringement claim by the New York Metropolitan Transit Authority. StationStops for iPhone has never under any circumstances claimed any affiliation or relationship to MTA or Metro-North whatsoever, has always used self-sourced schedule data which is not copyrightable by [...]

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Electronic Frontier Foundation Senior Staff Attorney Matthew Zimmerman called me yesterday by telephone, and I briefed him on StationStops’ legal battle with the MTA. The call was initiated by Michael Perkins of Greater Greater Washington, a blog which has provided some of the most in-depth and well-researched information on MTA’s licensing. I want to thank [...]

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Just when I thought Metro-North couldn’t get any more contemptuous. Turns out that MTA is going to be converting its customer satisfaction surveys into a common format. Conveniently, rather than just using the current customer satisfaction surveys, they are just going to NOT CONDUCT THE SURVEYS UNTIL SPRING OF 2010! Seriously, how do they get [...]

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For those of you just tuning in, here is a summary of the press coverage of StationStops vs MTA. StationStops welcomes public awareness of MTA’s actions through the media and can be contacted here to answer questions on the latest status. The New York Post MTA Demands Its Piece Of The Piephone Commenter georgesinc: “The [...]

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Copyfraud (Wikipedia): Copyfraud is a term used by Jason Mazzone, an Associate Professor of Law at Brooklyn Law School, to describe the use of false claims of copyright to attempt to control works not under one’s legal control. Mazzone argues that copyfraud is usually successful because there are few and weak laws criminalizing false statements [...]

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MTA has a couple of licensing programs for mobile app developers – one if for stuff which is actually copyrightable – maps, logos, and the like. I know developers who have this license and don’t really have any beef with it. The other licensing program is the one MTA and I are in a tussle [...]

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