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Apple Continues Sending Cease and Desist Letters Regarding 'App Store' Usage

nagromme said:
A generic term that wasn’t in common use before Apple (unlike, say, the term “windows”). In fact, the term “apps” wasn’t even used much pre-iPhone.
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AFAIK, Microsoft have never sold windows, nor have they gone after anyone who manufactures or sells Windows.

If Microsoft ever did go after and try to stop windows sales companies from calling their windows "Windows" then people could complain. The "Windows is generic" argument would only make sense if Microsoft were in the glass window indistury.
 
LOL @ people defend Apple. Just defend the other guy when they go after Apple under the same flag.

That being said, I thing trademarks are a funny thing. They are needed because no one should pretend to be Apple or MS or etc.

BUT companies wanna trademark (and patent) absolutely everything. Stifling, IMO, new stuff.


"No idea's original"
 
Stok3 said:
instead of wasting their time on this Apple needs to fix the iOS issues in 4.3.3
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Totally different teams working on each on totally different issues. Lawyers are sending out these cease and desist letters while the iOS team is working on iOS. Do you really think those lawyers can program for crap? (Not implying the skills are mutually exclusive, but still, they studied law in school, not computer science.)

My thoughts on this:

Apple is doing exactly what they should. If they don't aggressively stop everyone else from using the term App Store, it may in fact become a generic term and can be used as evidence in court, even though all these entities clearly appeared after the court cases began.
 
Originally Posted by gerbman
the name was almost never used before the iphone apps

Not true. I have worked in IT since the early 80's and I have used, and heard, the term apps throughout this period. I used it to describe applications in the mainframe world and beyond.

Maybe they should reply, cc'nig in Steve Jobs with a simple


No.

Sent from my iPhone.

:D
 
"App Store" (capital A, capital S, taken together as a unit) is only popular today because Apple popularized it and transformed the mobile software landscape. I don't think Apple should be victims of their own success, with enough companies trying to ride on their popularity wave that the trademark becomes so commonly used that it's invalidated.

"app" may be generic, "store" may be generic, but that's not what's trademarked here. Apple hasn't trademarked "app" to speak of "Apple applications", but only the term "App Store" in the business of online stores.

Narrowed down like that, App Store wasn't used before the iPhone for online stores, and Apple was fairly granted the trademark in my opinion. Judges shouldn't overrule fair play for some reason like "oh, now so many have started using Apple's trademark, that we can just as well invalidate it!" Ridiculous.

This specific case with "Appstore" vs "App Store" isn't exactly what I speak of above, although it's pretty damn close. It's obvious Amazon is just dancing around the trademark, and reminds me of the Linux distro called "Lindows". That was struck down by Microsoft, forcing them to be renamed to "Linspire".
 
callme said:
How generic are:

Windows or Internet Explorer?

Perhaps they should be removed from MS at the same time?
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Except an OS is considered an OS, not a 'windows', as well as a browser considered a browser, and not an 'internet explorer'. App stores are considered app stores; the term is specific.

I'm questioning Apple as of late. Some of their decisions (and products) have been, oddly misplaced. Can someone explain Ping? Is iAds ubiquitous? FCPX nugatory to pros. Things that are seemingly poor in execution.
 
I think I'll create my own app called AppAdvice since it seems to be a generic term now. I bet the OTHER AppAdvice developers won't mind.

Also I herby will begin calling all smartphones (android, windows, webos) iPhones.
 
Northgrove said:
"App Store" (capital A, capital S, taken together as a unit) is only popular today because Apple popularized it and transformed the mobile software landscape. I don't think Apple should be victims of their own success, and others trying to ride on their popularity wave.

"app" may be generic, "store" may be generic, but that's not what's trademarked here. Apple hasn't trademarked "app" to speak of "Apple applications", but only the term "App Store" in the business of online stores.

Narrowed down like that, App Store wasn't used before the iPhone for online stores, and Apple was fairly granted the trademark in my opinion. Judges shouldn't overrule fair play for some reason like "oh, now so many have started using Apple's trademark, that we can just as well invalidate it!" Ridiculous.
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exactly. isnt this why Android uses the term "Marketplace"?
 
It's too literal a phrase to be trademark-able IMO. If Apple can trademark App Store, then what the hell do we do when all possible phrases ending in synonyms for 'store' have been trademarked? (You just know a company will attempt to do that, lawyers need to keep busy and keep the money rolling in)
 
nwcs said:
I had never seen the term used until Apple used it and I've been in the biz for decades. I don't know if it's trademarkable or not but Apple certainly put the term into the vernacular and that's undeniable.
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I agree. I used to buy software. Some of them were called games, some utilities, some programs, some suites. I don't remember application being in common use until recently. As a double abbreviation for Apple and application, it makes sense that Apple would have pushed it. They might have waited too long to trademark it, though. We'll see.

And FWIW, the reason Apple is sending out all those cease and desist letters is just to document that they're defending the term they want as a trademark. It's about building a legal file.
 
Good point

nwcs said:
Not really. No more than if the president of Xerox said Canon xeroxed something making Xerox suddenly generic. Or if the president of Coke said Pepsi is making their own Coke products rendering Coke as generic from a trademark point of view.
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It's similar to Adobe's biggest pet peeve; saying that you Photoshopped a document or Photoshopped a picture or whatever. Just because you turned it into a noun or verb doesn't render it generic either.
 
Biolizard said:
It's too literal a phrase to be trademark-able IMO. If Apple can trademark App Store, then what the hell do we do when all possible phrases ending in synonyms for 'store' have been trademarked? (You just know a company will attempt to do that, lawyers need to keep busy and keep the money rolling in)
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Go to the USPTO website and search "Marketplace." There are 400+ live trademarks for terms ending in "Marketplace."

Whether "App" on its own is generic or "Store" on its own is generic is irrelevant. Microsoft has trademarked "Windows Phone 7." Each of those terms — windows, phone, and 7 — are generic on their own. But "Windows Phone 7" is not.
 
DJ Dilbert said:
It's similar to Adobe's biggest pet peeve; saying that you Photoshopped a document or Photoshopped a picture or whatever. Just because you turned it into a noun or verb doesn't render it generic either.
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Like you never hoovered the carpet nor xeroxed a document nor rick rolled the masses :D
 
If Apple seriously thinks that their customers will be confused and mistake this:



for their iOS/Mac App Store... well that's just a bit insulting now isn't it?
Just tells you what they think their customers are like. Hmph.

Poor decision to go after these little startups and nobodies. What is the 'PC App Store' going to do, steal Apple's business?

and it's not like Apple hasn't copied other companies' innovations :rolleyes:
 
JangoFett124 said:
Seriously? Are you joking? Are you actually saying that Microsoft Windows is a brand of windows?
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No. Way to read.

"Microsoft Windows" is a windowed operating system. As in, it uses a windows-based user interface. So windows is indeed a generic term in the same market as Microsoft Windows.

"App Store" is not a generic term.
 
Capt Underpants said:
Apple should give it up. It's getting petty.
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I think it is interesting that Amazon is choosing to fight this battle. Wouldn't it be easier to just use some kind of generic name that does not openly try to compete with Apple's App Store trademark?

Clearly Apple thinks they have a competitive reason to fight back.

Apple is not going to give up after one judge renders a verdict. Not on this one anyway.
 
We had apps in the 90´s. Palm apps. Then pocket pc apps. We had app stores (pocketgear, handandgo...)

"App Store" is GENERIC. I hate when people thinks that apple invented mobile apps. They sure did a lot to make them popular, but we had apps and apps stores years before the iphone.
 
mariov said:
We had apps in the 90´s. Palm apps. Then pocket pc apps. We had app stores (pocketgear, handandgo...)

"App Store" is GENERIC. I hate when people thinks that apple invented mobile apps. They sure did a lot to make them popular, but we had apps and apps stores years before the iphone.
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But there were no marketplaces called "App Store"s that you would get apps for PDAs back in the day. That's the key point here. Certainly there have been app stores forever but none were CALLED "App Store."
 
its pretty generic to me, every smartphone even my 7 year old symbian phone had apps and if u sell apps in a store its obvs a app store o_O
 
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