I agree with Marco, the rejection of a whole app for an icon is an exaggeration.
However people familiar with Apple know that for them their defense of trademarks and intellectual property is legendary, they bring the lawyers quick, and now they just veto your app.
So the rule for iPhone apps seems to be:
“When in doubt about using any Apple like Intellectual Property, just don’t.”
Rejected.
See that middle icon, there? The one that Joshua Keay designed for FileMagnet and generously offered to me for Instapaper 1.4?
That’s prohibited in the App Store because it depicts an iPhone, and Apple rejected Instapaper Pro 1.4 because of it.
We’ve reviewed Instapaper Pro and determined that we cannot post this version of your iPhone application to the App Store because of an Apple trademark image.
Citing this:
You may not use the Apple Logo or any other Apple-owned graphic symbol, logo, or icon on or in connection with web sites, products, packaging, manuals, promotional/advertising materials, or for any other purpose except pursuant to an express written trademark license from Apple, such as a reseller agreement.
It’s the same occasionally enforced rule that blocked an update to the immensely popular Pocket God app a few weeks ago (here, here).
I don’t know enough about trademark law to know whether Apple needs to defend against this sort of use, but it seems like a stretch to say that an abstractly drawn icon depicting a device (which resembles many other phones as much as it resembles the iPhone) is trademark infringement…
