According to our WWDR contact, there is no way to blacklist trademarks you own on the App Store, so we need to send DMCA take-down notices for all infringements. We sent 39 against 48 apps last year and it takes apple up to 3 months to pull the apps, even for obvious violations.
VLC is no longer available on the US App store. It was pulled, probably either by Apple for no longer being in compliance with App Store guidelines, or by VLC because a last-minute bug was found. I do not know which is true, and neither Apple nor VLC is talking about it.
This is untrue. Apple is just publishing it in different regions at different times. I had a call with them 3 hours ago and they told me that it can take up to 12 hours (!) until all regions have it.
On a related note. Is there anything you can do (trademark, etc.) about getting the scammy clones off of the store?