Doesn't matter. You're spitting hairs down to the atom in an attempt to win your argument.
Like I said above, Apple doesn't own a trademark for "app" or "apps". No one does. It's common usage. Has been since before the dawn of the mobile area. And since no one owns "apps", then "app store" is a generic, descriptive term, like "grocery store".
----------
You can't just go in, popularize something, and claim ownership.
If they called it the software repository instead of the app store, would Apple own "software repository" simply because they popularized it? No. Because that's a descriptive, common phrase in the 'nix world.
I realize this crowd doesn't necessarily care about what the actual law is and why they are wrong in their interpretation of it, but alas. It doesn't matter if it is generic and descriptive so long as you gain the necessary secondary meaning.
--
Yamaha Int'l Corp. v. Hoshino Gakki Co. Ltd., 840 F.2d 1572, 1580, 6 USPQ2d 1001, 1007 (Fed. Cir. 1988), quoting In re Capital Formation Counselors, Inc., 219 USPQ 916, 917 n.2 (TTAB 1983).
The purpose and significance of secondary meaning may be described as follows:
A term which is descriptive ... may, through usage by one producer with reference to his product, acquire a special significance so that to the consuming public the word has come to mean that the product is produced by that particular manufacturer. 1 Nims, Unfair Competition and Trademarks at §37 (1947). This is what is known as secondary meaning.
).. but copying doesn't mean it's illegal.
