is being served with a Complaint for Declaratory Judgment today. Since we did our first press release and linked the common phrase “pull my finger” to our app, they have been contacting us and asking us to stop…. However, Air-O-Matic, the people that developed Pull My Finger, beg to differ. I never imagined a common phrase like that would qualify for Federal trademark status, and I don’t believe it does. As a very small part of my marketing I uploaded a video to YouTube called “iFart Mobile – Pull My Finger” intending to leverage the term commonly used to set off flatulence. My team and I strongly believed that when people were given a choice between the two, iFart would be the clear winner…. In my opinion, their app was inferior to ours.
I’ve got nothing against the people who make Pull My Finger. It was more than another iPhone application. We took great pride in developing iFart Mobile. My team and I came up with the idea for an iPhone fart application in summer of 2008. Comm himself, in this dramatic but maybe not entirely serious blog post recounting this clash of titans and the groundbreaking fart litigation it spawned: As recounted by a Fort Collins newspaper, the two companies quickly emerged as the titans of flatulence simulation: “ held the early lead in sales of novelty applications that produce flatulence noises, but iFart surpassed Pull My Finger in popularity, in part because of the marketing that sparked the potential court battle.”īut let the story be told by Mr. iFart was produced by InfoMedia, Inc., based in Colorado and owned by a guy named Joel Comm, while Pull My Finger was created by Florida-based Air-O-Matic, Inc. I am proud to say I own many apps, but not either “iFart Mobile” or “Pull My Finger,” both of which, for just 99 cents, allow users to play a variety of simulated flatulence sounds. Some of the best-selling iPhone apps fall into that category. Comm, in which he stated that his application “has people pulling each other’s virtual fingers” and also used the exact phrase “pull my finger.”
The problematic marketing seems to have been a news release and YouTube video produced by Mr. But as 95 percent of my cable channels demonstrate, even the greatest inventions can be put to utterly stupid uses.
O’Reilly members experience live online training, plus books, videos, and digital content from nearly 200 publishers.I think my iPhone is a great invention, made even greater by the many software applications that you can download for it.
Get Attention! This Book Will Make You Money: How to Use Attention-Getting Online Marketing to Increase Your Revenue now with the O’Reilly learning platform. The iFart continues to lead the way of more than 200 copycat applications in the iTunes AppStore. The application features a number of hilarious original fart sounds and original features, such as security fart, sneak attack, record-a-fart, and fart-a-friend.
NBC, TechCrunch, Venture Beat, the Today Show, CNN Money, Mashable, the Washington Post, and Wired magazine were among the dozens of media outlets, tech sites, and blogs that featured the app, touting the fact that iFart sold nearly 40,000 copies on Christmas Day 2008. IFart made headlines around the world during Christmas 2008 when Joel Comm made sales figures public on his blog. That's the key to any product, farts or not. "iFart has a cool interface and a robust set of features that makes it better. "It's successful because it's not just fart sounds, anyone can do that, and believe me my competitors have tried," said Joel Comm. Joel has made hundreds of thousands of dollars by selling fart sounds. If you're wondering what iFart is, it's a fun little application created for the popular iPhone that plays farting sounds. Joel is the creator of the iFart application for the iPhone, which has been downloaded more than half a million times at $.99 a pop. In fact, he's yet another example of a smart marketer/businessman who's laughing all the way to the bank. Joel Comm doesn't care what people think about him. Chapter 50. Farting Sounds Make Us Laugh, But Is Anyone Buying?