Hi everyone,
I send apk file to my client, and didnt get payment for it.
So there are question if i able to somehow delete it or block it on his device?
Will be glad to know any your ideas .
Regards
Anton
You should have a clause in your contract that allows you to pursue legal action in the case of non-payment.
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How did you send it before receiving money?
Is this your first time playing merchant?
Unless you programmed some kind of backdoor into apk then no, you can not remotely disable it.
Although… I guess CIA could and the rest of the alphabet soup of gubmnt institutions could do something about it.
And damn you for your misleading title. You SENT it. It wasn’t stolen. The guy who isn’t paying you for it has broken the social contract but unless you were conducting a transaction through some kind of marketplace, you’re on your own.
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You could have easily sent him an APK that had a few lines of code that wouldn’t load the game scene after a certain time passed (just so that it can’t be pushed to Google Play or App Store). Then, when you’ve received payment, you’d send him the unlimited APK.
But as it stands now, nothing can be done. Perhaps if you went through a freelancing company they might be able to help, but chances are close to none.
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if you have a contract, its easy if your client is in your country (well, i guess it depends on the country)
if not, it will be more tricky, you would need some kind of conversation that could be used in court.
but, i am not a lawyer, so you better get one
Its lawsuit time.
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I would suggest telling him that you’re going to publish your own version of it, that’s better than what you did for him. That should get things sorted.
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Lawyer up. Until they pay you for the app, they can’t legally use it.
ALWAYS money first in these situations. Prove the stuff exists to the client, then they have no reason not to pay you unless they’re being shady.
If you haven’t coded such functionality in, then no. You can’t.
However, if they haven’t paid then they aren’t allowed to use the APK.
As long as you haven’t used any of their materials, you coudl threaten to release a free version of the program if they don’t pay up.
If you didn’t get paid, you did not give them something that belongs to them, it belongs to you. Get a lawyer, figure out what your options are. I wouldn’t just release it yourself without getting a legal opinion first, and you definitely want to try and block them, which you might be able to do by submitting a takedown notice to whatever app store they publish on.
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How much pay are we talking about here? Unfortunately lawyers are expensive, so unless it’s a fair bit of money it might not be worth pursuing that way.
Aside from that, what kind of app is it? Does it contain any of their IP? There might be other options there.
Broadly speaking, though, unfortunately you can’t trust someone to pay you just because there’s a contract in place.
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I think the only ways to deal with this situation are:
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Create a contract that says that you own everything you do until receipt of payment. This is simply to enable you to comfortably use your work in future if things go pear-shaped.
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Figure out what proof the app stores need for a takedown notice, and make sure you have it before sending off any apks;
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Get a lawyer to chase them (probaby a waste of time and money).
@grimunk I don’t think it’s a great idea to release the apk as such, as there are probably legalities to consider as you mentioned. But (and I’m not a lawyer) I think it wouldn’t hurt to send off an email along the lines of “As far as I know I still own the rights to my work and I’ll be releasing an app to recover my costs” and/or something about getting your lawyer onto them, and see what surfaces. In these sort of situations I think the best thing is to show that you are a potential threat of some kind. At this stage one might think the cuffs are are well and truly off, but I’ve heard stories of clients coming back to pay with some vague excuse, probably when they feel like something could go wrong that they hadn’t really considered.
In the end though, milestones are your friend and they should not be so large that not being paid for one takes the bottom out of one’s life.
At my old job there were some clients who just regularly took ages to pay. So you’re right, there may in fact be no malicious intent at all. That doesn’t help a developer who’s trying to pay their bills, of course.
How long has the amount been outstanding?
True, though if the client didn’t pay for a long time they should not be offended to see a threatening email. No harm no foul, but one must be ready to deal with the foul.
Good question about the time though, I’d definitely keep things fairly polite for a few weeks or so.