Guideline 5.2.1: Someone else's intellectual property

Guideline 5.2.1 - Legal - Intellectual Property

Your app or its metadata appears to contain protected third-party
material without the necessary authorization. Specifically, your app
includes [content resembling a third-party brand, character, or work].

Apps should be submitted by the person or legal entity that owns or has
licensed the intellectual property and other relevant rights. To
resolve this issue, please provide documentary evidence that you have
all necessary rights to use this content, or remove it from your app.

What it actually means

Something in your app, or in its name, icon, screenshots, or description, looks like it belongs to someone else. Apple's rule: don't use protected third-party material such as trademarks, copyrighted works, or patented ideas without permission, and don't include misleading or copycat names or metadata. There's also an ownership rule attached: apps should be submitted by the person or company that owns or has licensed the rights. You can't publish an app for a brand you don't represent.

The reviewer isn't ruling on law; they're pattern-matching. If your app contains a recognisable character, logo, song, or brand name and you're not obviously that brand, the burden flips to you: Apple asks for "documentary evidence" (a licence, a written authorization) that you're allowed to use it. No document, no approval.

This one is rated a blocker because it doesn't wear down with polish. The infringing thing has to go, or you have to prove your rights. And Apple's guidelines are blunt about repeat behaviour: copying another developer's work is listed among the things that get your apps removed and you expelled from the Apple Developer Program.

Why AI-built apps hit this

AI tools generate infringement fluently. Ask an image model for a mascot and it may hand you something one lawyer's letter away from a Pokémon. Prompt "in the style of" a studio, a game, or a famous app, and the output inherits exactly the recognisability Apple screens for. You never copied anything on purpose; the model did it for you, and you own the result.

Templates add a second layer: many ship with stock photos, icon packs, or demo music that was never licensed for commercial distribution. It looked like free starter content; in Apple's eyes it's unlicensed third-party material in your binary.

The third trap is imitation by aspiration. An app icon that echoes Instagram's gradient or a name one letter off a famous product reads as a copycat, and 5.2.1 covers metadata as much as content.

How to fix it

1. Identify the flagged material. The rejection usually names it or includes a screenshot. If it's ambiguous, ask in Resolution Center which specific content was flagged before changing things blindly.
2. Choose: remove or prove. If you genuinely hold a licence, gather the paperwork (a signed licence or written authorization from the rights holder) and attach it in Resolution Center. For almost every founder, the honest answer is you don't have one, so remove it.
3. Replace AI-generated lookalikes with something original. Regenerate the asset with a prompt that names no brand, character, artist, or "style of" anything. Describe what you want ("a friendly round blue robot mascot, flat design"), then check the output doesn't resemble anything famous before using it.
4. Sweep the whole app, not just the flagged item. Check the icon, every screenshot, the app name and subtitle, bundled images and audio, and any template content you never chose. One flag means the reviewer will look harder next time.
5. Rename if your metadata imitates. If your app name, icon, or description trades on a famous product, change it to describe what your app is instead of what it resembles.

What to write in Resolution Center

Adapt this to what you actually changed; don't send it unmodified:

Hello,

Thank you for the feedback. We did not intend to use third-party
material and have resolved this:

- Removed [the flagged content] from the app and its metadata
- Replaced it with original content: [brief description]
- Reviewed the entire app, icon, screenshots, and description for any
  other third-party material and removed [anything else found]

[Or, only if true: We hold a licence for this material and have attached
documentation from [rights holder].]

We'd appreciate a second look at the updated submission.

Thank you,
[Your name]

How to avoid it next time

Adopt one rule for every AI-generated asset: prompts describe, they never name. No brands, no characters, no artists, no "like [app]". And before any generated image ships, ask yourself whether it reminds you of something that already exists, because if it reminds you, it will remind the reviewer. Treat template-bundled media as unlicensed until you've confirmed otherwise, and keep receipts for anything you did license. Repeat 5.2.1 flags are how developer accounts die; original-by-default is cheaper than the appeal.

Related guides: 4.3: Spam (your whole app resembling other apps, rather than containing their material) and 2.3.7: Name, subtitle & keyword abuse (metadata that borrows other apps' names to get found in search).