After yesterday's revelations that the maker of the $2.49 iPhone application Transit Sydney had been threatened by RailCorp, several other train schedule software makers have come forward to complain they have also been threatened with copyright infringement suits. RailCorp admits threatening four mobile developers but says that's because the applications were providing "out-of-date" timetables.

The applications use timetable information sourced from the CityRail website but if CityRail updates those timetables, the developer must send out a new version of software for it to remain up-to-date. It is likely that RailCorp does not want to rely on developers to do this, however, it is refusing to say when its own official version will be released, leaving commuters high and dry. Dan Stevenson, an avid mobile user, referred the issue to NSW Premier Nathan Rees over Twitter, noting that RailCorp's Victorian and Western Australian equivalents had no problem with software makers using their timetables.

Rees, or one of his minders, tweeted back, saying: "Thanks for the link - i'll look into it." Intellectual property lawyer Trevor Choy said even though RailCorp was a public service, copyright law was "biased" in favour of the Government and did not make any distinction between information that should be a public service (like train timetables) and private information.

"Government agencies are supposed to use their powers wisely, but here they are behaving exactly like a private company preventing a competitor from launching a 'competing product'," said Choy. Nick Maher, who developed TrainView - supporting all Java-enabled mobile phones - in 2007 and TripView for the iPhone in October last year, has had to stop selling both applications after threats from RailCorp. Maher said RailCorp invited him to a meeting in 2007 to discuss the possibility of it licensing TrainView, but "nothing actually came of that".

"At the time I asked them if they had any problem with me using the data and they said they were OK with it," he said. "I continued to sell it for a couple of years and just recently I contacted them to let them know I had a new version for the iPhone and they said they'd changed their stance with regards to copyright and that they weren't giving any permission for people to use their timetable data in third-party apps."

The developers of another iPhone app, Metro Sydney, suffered the same fate and were forced to remove the train timetable feature recently after threats from RailCorp. The software now includes just bus and ferry timetables. One of the first train scheduling apps, for pocket PCs using the Palm operating system, was broken after RailCorp modified its website to prevent the software from scraping its timetable information. RailCorp, whose chief executive is Rob Mason, had earlier threatened the developer with legal action but he refused to stop distributing the software, saying he had written permission from RailCorp to use the information.

"RailCorp has contacted about four developers requesting them to remove from sale mobile applications that breach RailCorp's copyright over its timetables because these applications were providing out-of-date timetables that had the potential to confuse and mislead our customers," a RailCorp spokeswoman said. "Copyright in all CityRail timetables is owned by RailCorp. Any unlicensed republication of the timetables represents a breach of this copyright. We have not pursued any legal action to date."

"I think it's a shame," said Maher. "I think there are some really good apps out there and I think that it'd be good to open up the data and let the developers compete. That way they'll probably come up with better products than what RailCorp could do by themselves." Meanwhile, Thales announced this week that it had been awarded a contract to provide Sydney Ferries with software allowing commuters to access real-time ferry information "on the wharf, on vessels, over the internet, on mobile phones and PDAs".

The service is scheduled for full implementation by the middle of next year. "Customers will be able to see what time a ferry is expected to arrive or depart, as well as its location on the harbour," Thales said in a statement.