The Fruity Cargo Cult Apple has been dragged into court for allegedly lifting webcam smarts from a small developer and rigging iOS in its own favour.
Reincubate has sued in a US federal court in New Jersey, alleging that Job’s Mob engaged in anticompetitive conduct and patent infringement related to its Camo smartphone webcam app.
Reincubate’s Camo and Camo Studio apps let iOS or Android phones act as webcams for Macs and PCs, and it launched Camo in 2020.
In 2022, Job’s Mob rolled out Continuity Camera, which turns an iPhone into a webcam for a Mac, but only if you stay inside its device ecosystem.
The lawsuit says Job’s Mob copied patented Camo features, built them into iOS and did it to “redirect user demand to Apple’s own platform-tied offering.”
Reincubate claims the behaviour breaks US antitrust law by reinforcing dominance in smartphone software and making it harder for users to switch to rival platforms.
It is seeking monetary damages and court orders intended to block Job’s Mob’s misconduct, in Reincubate Ltd v. Apple Inc in the US District Court for the District of New Jersey.
Reincubate says Job’s Mob initially cheered it on, with the complaint saying it “actively induced and encouraged” development and marketing before rolling out Continuity Camera.
The suit calls this “Sherlocking,” described as “shorthand for Apple’s pattern of appropriating and extinguishing innovative software developed outside its ecosystem” and then pretending it invented it.
It claims Job’s Mob cultivated a cosy relationship to gain access to the workings.
“Here, Apple actively cultivated a relationship of trust with Reincubate, induced the company to share technical details, beta builds, and market data, and leveraged that privileged access to inform its own development of Continuity Camera,” the lawsuit says.
Reincubate says Camo was widely used internally before Continuity Camera launched. “Camo was used by thousands of Apple employees across all divisions of the company,” the lawsuit says.
The complaint adds that Job’s Mob pushed Reincubate to spend more, then turned nasty once it spotted a threat.
“At first, Apple encouraged Reincubate to increase its investment in Camo. But when Apple recognised that Camo was a threat, it took steps not only to copy it, thereby infringing Reincubate’s patents, but to undermine Camo’s functionality such that Reincubate could not compete with Apple’s rip-off, called Continuity Camera, which was only operable between Apple devices and Mac computers,” the court documents say.
Reincubate, chief executive Aidan Fitzpatrick wrote that Job’s Mob set out to kneecap competition.
“Rather than competing with us, Apple deployed a series of obstacles to tilt the playing field, infringed our IP, and did so in service of preventing competition from rival platforms,” Fitzpatrick writes.
Reincubate, chief executive Aidan Fitzpatrick said Job’s Mob had “thousands of staff” running Camo internally and made “all sorts of promises” about support.
“Yet once we’d proven it could be done, and users loved it, they took it and built our features into a billion iPhones, Macs, displays, iPads and TVs, while shutting us out and preventing additional interoperability we could provide to the ecosystem,” he said.
Fitzpatrick said he was initially “puzzled” by Continuity Camera, and decided the aim was control.
“We’d not come between Apple and users, we’d come between Apple and its walled garden,” Fitzpatrick writes.
