Comment 1 for bug 1155790

I'm not sure that D-bus interface availability is a good indicator; I'd expect any app running in background and occasionally showing something in the dock to have its D-bus interface available at all times. That's what code examples from https://wiki.ubuntu.com/Unity/LauncherAPI do (I've checked with D-feet) and there seems to be no documented way to terminate the D-bus interface.

So I suggest also checking if either the badge or the progressbar is visible and only showing the icon if one of them is visible. Disregard the suggestion if terminating the D-bus interface client-side is reasonably easy and generally makes sense.