Apple Sues Amazon Over 'App Store' Trademark

tinman0 said:

Strange, I've been in IT for 20 years, and until Apple produced the App Store, I've never heard anyone in IT (or outside IT for that matter) use the word "app", let alone "App Store".

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I don't know what you do in IT (IT is large), but you've been living under a rock. Web Apps was in broad use back in the 90s. Tomcat 5 was released circa 2003 and you deployed your J2EE applications to the... drumroll please... webapps folder. Even older versions did the same.

Application has been around forever in computer terms. People shortening it to App has beem around for as long.

The, the catch phrase "What's this device's killer app ?" ring a bell to anyone ? That phrase has been in use for a long time by the technological press.

VisiCalc was called a killer app. That was released for the Apple II. Do the math people.

I always said "write an app". Why don't they get British, and call it the App Shop?

Store is such an American term anyway.

*LTD* said:

And no one ever said App until the App Store. It's rightfully Apple's. They've earned it and I hope their stellar legal team chalks up another win.

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This is simply false - for some platforms, such as Acorn's RISC OS, the terms "app" and "application" were the most common way of referring to a bundle forming software with a GUI (sound familiar?).

A quick newsgroup search will confirm hundreds of thousands of uses of "app" before 2000 across various platforms to refer to software applications.

tinman0 said:

Strange, I've been in IT for 20 years, and until Apple produced the App Store, I've never heard anyone in IT (or outside IT for that matter) use the word "app", let alone "App Store".

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These things can be hard to judge with hindsight. However, I have heard many many people using the word "trouser", but have never, ever heard anyone saying they bought anything in a "Trouser Store". So I would say that a company specialising in selling trousers on the web could open a web store, call it "Trouser Store", and get a trademark for the name. And if they were successful with their store, then in three years time all their competitors would claim that the term is generic and everybody should be allowed to call their business "The Trouser Store".

samcraig said:

Tell me how you can buy something from Amazon's app store and load it on an iDevice

Tell me how you can buy something from Apple's appstore and install it on something OTHER than an iDevice

So I ask - WHAT confusion?!

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To your first point: Apple spends tons of marketing dollars to explain to people that they can go to the App Store and either buy apps or get free apps that will run on an iPod Touch, iPhone, or iPad. And some people _will_ go to the Amazon App Store, buy something, and then complain to Apple that it won't run on their iPhone. That's confusion.

Next, Apple has spent marketing dollars to tell people that they can go to the App Store and buy apps, and that Apple's app store is a good place to buy apps, and every time customers do that, Apple makes money. Now people will go to the Amazon App Store, thinking they are at the excellent App Store that is advertised by Apple, when in fact they are not. That's confusion.

Your second part is of course irrelevant because Apple _does_ have the trademark for "App Store", so if you were confused by Apple's use of the term, that wouldn't matter.

rococoloco said:

Ubuntu has had a Software Center long before Apple brought out the iPhone and wanted to control what people installed, then the transition to the desktop.

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That would be a very good argument if Apple (or anyone else other than Ubuntu) tried to trademark "Software Center". The argument for Apple being allowed to trademark "App Store" is that the term "App Store" hasn't been used before Apple used it.

Secondary Meaning

everyone seems to be skipping over the holding that even generic trademarks can become enforceable if they acquire sufficient secondary meaning through widespread acceptance and use. either no one else here is a lawyer...or were you the people i saw sleeping during internet law, trademarks, and intro to IP law.

TennisandMusic said:

Windows is "non generic" when used as a naming scheme for a computer software product. App store is as generic as it gets when talking about...app stores. Your statement is showing exactly why something like Microsoft Windows is ok, or Apple OSX is ok, but "app store" would not be.

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I am sorry but I need to point out that you don't seem to understand your own logic there.
Well, windows likewise should be generic for many many software products that draw user interface windows in a computer...but it is not. App store, as a software product, deserves just as much rights to assert it's monicker and the strong brand affiliation it connotes.

DaGreat01 said:

Good....

No one ever said the word "app" until Apple's App Store...

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You can't be serious. So all the programmers of the world since the '60s have only referred to their applications as what?...programs?

Get real. 'App' and 'application' have been used very frequently since the mid 90s. Before the 90s I would argue that "program" and "application" were 50/50.

gnasher729 said:

So I would say that a company specialising in selling trousers on the web could open a web store, call it "Trouser Store", and get a trademark for the name.

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In the UK, descriptive, non-distinctive trademarks will be rejected. While "app store" would require some domain knowledge to demonstrate descriptiveness, I think even the most technically ignorant judge will know what trousers are and what stores are.

Wirelessly posted (Mozilla/5.0 (iPhone; U; CPU iPhone OS 4_3 like Mac OS X; en-us) AppleWebKit/533.17.9 (KHTML, like Gecko) Version/5.0.2 Mobile/8F190 Safari/6533.18.5)

DaGreat01 said:

Good....

No one ever said the word "app" until Apple's App Store...

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Mmmmm, everyone I know has been calling applications "apps" since... I don't know... 1991?
Regardless, Apple has trademarked the term and it is well within their legal right to protect said term.
It's no different than "Band-aid." Only J&J can market self-adhesive bandages as "band-aids." And last I checked, that is exactly what everyone calls them: band-aids.

How about calling it the Amazon Apps Store? I have never seen Apple add the S, surely the greedy, evil, cheating, baby brains eating SOB's at Apple would not object to this.

tinman0 said:

Strange, I've been in IT for 20 years, and until Apple produced the App Store, I've never heard anyone in IT (or outside IT for that matter) use the word "app", let alone "App Store".

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What exactly is your job, that you've never heard the word "app" before?

Application developers have used "app" for decades.

It has also been used as shorthand for mobile applications for years before the iPhone came along. (Count the number of times "apps" is used in this 2005 article about Blackberry software, for example.)

Well if Amazon decides to rename things, perhaps they should change the name of the "Amazon Kindle" to something that does not sound synonymous with "rainforest burn". LOL

Actually I think the kindle is superior to the ipad when it comes to reading books. For the price you can't bet it and if you intend to read a lot, its easier on the eyes. The ipad has more applications though.

spydr said:

I am sorry but I need to point out that you don't seem to understand your own logic there.
Well, windows likewise should be generic for many many software products that draw user interface windows in a computer...but it is not.

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Microsoft's Windows Operating System is much more than a software product that draws a user interface using a windowing system. It is an operating system, including an hardware abstraction layer, storage management, a process scheduler, application programming interfaces (there's that nasty Application word again...) and a user interface, which might or might not use the Windowing concept.

Those of you against Apple on this don't know the first thing about marketing.

Apple has built the App Store as a brand. Of course they want to protect it. It doesn't matter that "App" has become a generic name. "Kleenex" has become generic too, that doesn't mean Kimberly Clark has to give up the name. "Dumpster" is also a generic name now. See my point?

Considering nobody called it an App Store until Apple started calling it that, I don't blame them for fighting other companies on it. It isn't frivolous - it's business. And from a marketing standpoint, it makes perfect sense.

bretm said:

I know you're kidding. Applications have always been called applications. Apple and Windows have called them applications since, well, always. Apps is a term I've used all my life. It's just a natural abbreviation of applications. Apple does have the trademark for whatever reason. True, no one else thought to call their store app store. I hereby call dibs on ProgMart.

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Windows has always used the term "programs", not "applications"

ck2875 said:

everyone seems to be skipping over the holding that even generic trademarks can become enforceable if they acquire sufficient secondary meaning through widespread acceptance and use. either no one else here is a lawyer...or were you the people i saw sleeping during internet law, trademarks, and intro to IP law.

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Yeah, people saying 'app store' is too general, how do you explain 'National Basketball Association' or 'Golf Network' as being enforceable trademarks. Those describe exactly what the products are but I can't create an National Association of Basketball teams and call it the National Basketball Association, now can I

TimUSCA said:

Those of you against Apple on this don't know the first thing about marketing.

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I bet you were also for Apple when they stole iOS and iPhone straight out of Cisco's trademark portfolio.

bretm said:

I know you're kidding. Applications have always been called applications. Apple and Windows have called them applications since, well, always. Apps is a term I've used all my life. It's just a natural abbreviation of applications. Apple does have the trademark for whatever reason. True, no one else thought to call their store app store. I hereby call dibs on ProgMart.

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Actually, every other OS except Mac OS called them programs.

Also, you should look up the 'rise' of the term app into popular conscious. It happened around the year 2007. Right about the time the iPhone was released.

dukebound85 said:

Windows has always used the term "programs", not "applications"

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That is patently false. Install Windows 95, go to start, then run, then type in explorer. Hit enter. Go to C:, Windows. Sort by type. Find any .exe file, they should all be bunched up together. Now go to the "Type" column and see what is written there. Hint, it's not program and it starts with a capital A.

Ironworker808 said:

Actually, every other OS except Mac OS called them programs.

Also, you should look up the 'rise' of the term app into popular conscious. It happened around the year 2007. Right about the time the iPhone was released.

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Oh look, an article from 1989 describing OS/2's rise and using the word Application about 3 dozens times :

http://books.google.com/books?id=JzoEAAAAMBAJ&pg=PT40#v=onepage&q&f=false

Again guys : Web Apps. 90s. I was writing them in Perl at the time.

Michael CM1 said:

So with this defense you're saying it's OK for someone who owns a bunch of orchards to sell stuff in a place called The Apple Store? In Britain, could the next male monarch sell fast food at a Burger King?

Grocery store is allowed because grocery isn't some word that was coined by one company. It's extremely generic. I had never heard the term "app" used to describe an application before the App Store. It doesn't matter whether 10 people had a programming club that called it that just in that club. It matters what happens in general usage.

Other companies can fight it all they want, but I think Apple will win these cases. It's almost insulting that Amazon shortened it to one word.

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Application was not coined by Apple. They may be the ones that took it and ran with it, but they were not the first.

The king of whatever ****ing country should be able to work in whatever profession doing whatever whenever it doesn't conflict with his government duties.

In general usage, everyone refers to the stores already as app stores. If people already perceive them as app stores, does the consumer confusion stance even make sense?

Full of Win said:

How about calling it the Amazon Apps Store? I have never seen Apple add the S, surely the greedy, evil, cheating, baby brains eating SOB's at Apple would not object to this.

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You are sure ready to insult a lot of people at once... Expected by simply reading your signature. You're certainly nbata.

must be a mega slow news day pants sandwiches trousers apps applications windows programs think ill chuck in the term kegs that will bring up a fair few things with a bit of luck in google can i use google or will google sue me for using there name

KnightWRX said:

That is patently false. Install Windows 95, go to start, then run, then type in explorer. Hit enter. Go to C:, Windows. Sort by type. Find any .exe file, they should all be bunched up together. Now go to the "Type" column and see what is written there. Hint, it's not program and it starts with a capital A.

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I stand corrected though when I have used Windows (namely XP on), the term program seemed to be used much more prevalently in regards to packages that Apple coined applications

benthewraith said:

...



I like how you label anyone who disagrees with you as a troll. Makes you question who the trolls really are in this conversation.

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not really care what any one here thinks or says. Pick a fight else where.

KnightWRX said:

I bet you were also for Apple when they stole iOS and iPhone straight out of Cisco's trademark portfolio.

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True.

RE: iPhone trademark., Apple got it from Cisco, who got it from Infogear, who got it from Cidco.