A Windows Phone developer of a popular application Skinery Tiles Pro realized that his application has been blatantly cloned by another developer 炫桌面. While most of the time there is nothing much to stop others from copying ideas which are not copyrighted or patented, there are exceptions where you can tell that there is seemingly identical resemblance between the 2 applications, almost like a “xap dump” and resubmission under a different developer account.

If you own the rights to the brand or copyrights,  example representing MSN, MSNBC, Microsoft, Contoso etc. and wish to report application using your trademark in the application, you maybe report the infringement here

If the infringement are illustrated as below and you are not protected under copyrights, there is an alternative method to report these cases. Notice the almost identical resemblances in both of the images.

Skinery Tile Pro (Original)

Skinery Tile Pro Clone (Copied)

For duplicate apps, the publisher or someone on behalf of the publisher can send the app details (original and cloned) to reportapp@microsoft.com. When contacting support for duplicate apps, do provide links directly to both apps. Do note that unlike direct copyright infringement, these complains are considered on a case by case basis.

More information about the process can be found here: http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/windowsphone/help/jj215906%28v=vs.105%29