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Original poster
Apr 12, 2001
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135003-app_store_icon.jpg


Back in January, Microsoft filed an objection to Apple's trademark application for the term "App Store", arguing that Apple had usurped a generic term for its trademark, causing confusion and difficulties for other companies seeking to promote their own application marketplaces.

TechFlash now reports that Apple has hit back at Microsoft in the dispute, arguing that Microsoft has failed to prove the generic nature of the term and takes a dig at Microsoft and its own work to secure "Windows" as a non-generic trademark.
In a none-too-subtle dig at its longtime rival, Apple points in part to Microsoft's own defense of one of its most valuable trademarks.

"Having itself faced a decades-long genericness challenge to its claimed WINDOWS mark, Microsoft should be well aware that the focus in evaluating genericness is on the mark as a whole and requires a fact-intensive assessment of the primary significance of the term to a substantial majority of the relevant public," says Apple in the filing. "Yet, Microsoft, missing the forest for the trees, does not base its motion on a comprehensive evaluation of how the relevant public understands the term APP STORE as a whole."
Apple response points directly to the alternative names used by other companies for their own application marketplaces as evidence of the non-generic nature of the "App Store" term, and notes that the company has taken steps to protect the trademark from becoming a generic term by reaching out to entities that have used it improperly.

The U.S. Patent and Trademark Office will now consider the case and determine to grant Microsoft's motion or allow the trademark case to go to trial for a final resolution.

Article Link: Apple Defends Against Microsoft in 'App Store' Trademark Dispute
 

akm3

macrumors 68020
Nov 15, 2007
2,252
279
Apple's got the best lawyers and $60 billion dollars. You aren't going to beat them in court, ever, anywhere.
 

marksman

macrumors 603
Jun 4, 2007
5,764
5
I think Windows will lose this..

Apple has done enough to develop and present the App Store to hold mark rights to it...
 

TigerWoodsIV

macrumors 6502a
Apr 3, 2010
590
445
If anyone should be suing about App Store it's android, so google. What app store does Microsoft have? Its phones are a joke and what tablet? Yes there's a mac app store, which microsoft could try and copy, but it's famous bc of a mobile platform.

And yes, windows? I have windows in my room, but I certainly don't have an App Store anywhere? How is app store more generic. They should really just give it up and stop paying their lawyers for nonsense lawsuits.
 

TigerWoodsIV

macrumors 6502a
Apr 3, 2010
590
445
and at Apple for trying to trademark generic names/terms. They spend more money filing patents than on innovation at this point.. ipad 1.5 case in point.

If they didn't innovate, they couldn't file patents. Think about that one.
 

adamran

macrumors member
Sep 1, 2010
35
0
Wirelessly posted (Mozilla/5.0 (iPad; U; CPU OS 4_2_1 like Mac OS X; en-us) AppleWebKit/533.17.9 (KHTML, like Gecko) Version/5.0.2 Mobile/8C148 Safari/6533.18.5)

akm3 said:
Apple's got the best lawyers and $60 billion dollars. You aren't going to beat them in court, ever, anywhere.

Right. Are you forgetting who they are against? Apples opponent isn't exactly poor.
 

TigerWoodsIV

macrumors 6502a
Apr 3, 2010
590
445
And what about the word "Apple"?

This needs to stop before it goes any further lol. Everyone knows Apple is Apple, windows is Microsoft, and app store is apple. That's good enough...this trivial BS is ridiculous by whoever starts it, and in this case it was Microsoft.
 

jav6454

macrumors Core
Nov 14, 2007
22,303
6,256
1 Geostationary Tower Plaza
So apparently, Apple won... Microsoft, forgot their own brands... well. This is a trivial matter at any point.

If Microsoft would have won, it would mean squat to average Joe consumer as everyone now a days understands the App Store as iPhone OS dependency, not Windows Mobile.
 

theelysium

Suspended
Nov 18, 2008
562
360
Boo Microsoft

Selfish Microsoft..

They coin the most generic term "Windows" and when they lose out this round to "App Store" they want to whine.

Bugger off Microsoft you missed it!

I bet you anything if Microsoft was first to the "App Store" name they would try to patent it. They're so two faced!:mad:
 

TigerWoodsIV

macrumors 6502a
Apr 3, 2010
590
445
Nokia and Microsoft file lots (and own a lot of key) patents. Yet, all I hear about them is how they aren't innovators.

All these companies try to innovate. Pretty sure people like Jony Ive aren't filing patents, they're trying to design products. Apple has just been more successful lately so now everyone expects them to have great innovations all the time when companies like Microsoft, Nokia, RIM, etc. haven't had anything big in a while.
 

pr5owner

macrumors 65816
Jun 10, 2007
1,016
0
Yet another excuse to LOL at windows.

windows is an operating system
Microsoft is the company that filed the complaint (as well as some others i believe)

what are you talking about?

also app store is pretty lame to trademark, its like pepsi being the only company to use a shade of blue, its ridiculous bs.
 

theelysium

Suspended
Nov 18, 2008
562
360
All these companies try to innovate. Pretty sure people like Jony Ive aren't filing patents, they're trying to design products. Apple has just been more successful lately so now everyone expects them to have great innovations all the time when companies like Microsoft, Nokia, RIM, etc. haven't had anything big in a while.

Microsoft, Nokia and RIM have done big things this year... i.e. their big stock drops... lol does that count?
 

Andronicus

macrumors 6502a
Apr 1, 2008
819
817
and at Apple for trying to trademark generic names/terms. They spend more money filing patents than on innovation at this point.. ipad 1.5 case in point.

Yah, but just a brief glimpse of your post history suggests to take anything you say with a grain of salt. It seems in your eyes Apple can do no good and google is nothing but good, which begs to question why you're here in the first place?
 
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