App Developers Insurance

App development is a fun, fast-paced, and exciting industry. With on average, 6,140 new mobile applications being released each day and an estimated 2,900,000 apps available to download on Google Play’s app store, there are no signs of the mobile app industry slowing down any time soon.

With such competition, exposures are heightened, making it important for anyone bringing a new app to market to understand the potential exposures they face. Just like other businesses, there are serious legal issues that you must be aware of and deal with properly in order to minimise your liability and achieve success.

Our App developers insurance will help defend your business from a range of threats you may not have even considered. For example:

Intellectual Property Rights Infringement issues, such as:

• allegations over similarities in an apps source code or content, such as the apps name, icon, layout, graphics and sounds used
• breaches of licensing terms for apps being developed by Open Source Software
• disputes in relation to integration with other third party platforms, like Facebook, twitter and google maps, etc.
• arguments over IP ownership when the apps creation has been outsourced

Privacy and Data Collection issues surrounding the collection of personally identifiable information, such as:

• disputes surrounding the end users consent in relation to what data is collected, how it is stored, how it is being used and if it is being shared with any third parties
• breaches of foreign privacy laws – It doesn’t matter where the app company is located, if it is available to overseas users, you could be susceptible to overseas privacy laws
• failure to comply with statutory regulations such as the Child Online Privacy Protection Act (COPPA) or Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act (HIPAA)

User Generated Content. User-generated content can include any type of publicly-viewable text, comment, image, video, audio, post, produced by a user, rather than the business behind the app:

• questions regarding who is liable for third-party content if it proves to be defamatory, harmful, infringing or otherwise unlawful
• how user generated content is moderated. As a publisher, you are responsible for ensuring that all user generated content on your app complies with all applicable policies and laws

No matter how small your app development business is when you start out, it’s usually well worth the expense to arrange a good risk management transfer solution, by the way of an App Developer’s insurance policy. After all, you don’t want to be tied up in court cases that you can’t afford to defend.