Apple Sues Amazon Over 'App Store' Trademark

garyhoare said:
I heard "application" from Mac people and "program" from PC people. Never "app."
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x2

Mac's have always had Applications and PC's have always had Programs. I wonder why nobody is trying to use the term "Program Store"?

The extension for "programs" on Mac's is .app for Pete's sake!
 
Yamcha said:
I disagree, when I tell people what I use to do my Web Design work, I always say "The applications I use are Photoshop & Illustrator", I never say "Programs"

The word App has been around a long time before 2008, thats for certain..
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"App" and "application" are not the same. No one says "progs" instead of program. Wouldn't that be a natural abbreviation too?
 
RE: "Generic term"

Anybody that has repeatedly sued over the generic term "Windows" needs to ****.

The Kleenex analogy is excellent. Remember when Hormel had a problem with junk mail being called SPAM? Waaaaay too late to do anything about it. Apple needs to strike while the iron is hot.
 
Date "App" was first used in popular English literature: sometime before 1651

Source

According to that source it was used long ago. It's a generic term, most people will agree.. I just find it hard to believe that you think the word "App" wasn't used before Apple came into the game.. Thats ridiculous, it must have been used, its like the word PC, people have been using it for years, thats what generally happens with words, people use the shorter version..
 
This is the same company that sued NYC because NYC used "Big Apple" in its travel brochure. Apple, way to piss off one of your biggest retailers. Amazon has sold so many iPod Touches and MacBooks it's not even funny. And this just reaffirms that Apple is universally despised by its partners.
 
TennisandMusic said:
Because it's "Microsoft Windows".

This wouldn't be much different from a placed called "The Grocery Store", and then trying to trademark it so that no other food place could refer to themselves as a grocery store. It's a bit silly.
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I dare you to develop an OS, call it Windows (sans the "Microsoft" part) and see what happens.

Ditto another completely generic brand name, Office.
 
Yamcha said:
I disagree, when I tell people what I use to do my Web Design work, I always say "The applications I use are Photoshop & Illustrator", I never say "Programs"

The word App has been around a long time before 2008, thats for certain..
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Agree with you on this one. One pharmacy cant sue another pharmacy just because they have the same name. They sell pharmaceuticals so surely can have the same word in their name. In the same way that the 'App Store' (Apple) and 'Appstore' (Amazon) both sell applications. Apple didnt invent the app so I dont get how they are planning on winning this one.

They are just giving the Amazon Appstore some media attention. If Apple hadn't decided to sue them, I still would not have heard of it.
 
Poor little apple, they are afraid the Amazon will take a sliver of their pie. :rolleyes:

I could see this going either way in court.
 
spydr said:
And they have sued the pants off a company that named their Linux port "Lindows" and actually won. Of course windows and even things that sound like windows are protected by MS.
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But that makes sense because "Lindows" in terms of an OS sounds like something related to "Microsoft Windows." If I had a window store in La Jolla called "Lindows", then I doubt they could touch me. That is the point. 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.
 
spydr said:
And they have sued the pants off a company that named their Linux port "Lindows" and actually won. Of course windows and even things that sound like windows are protected by MS.
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haha. Its like apple suing T-Mobile because the Myphone sounds like the iPhone......
 
I am sure apple have the trademark "App Store" not "Appstore".

Maybe they should just call it App Market ;)
 
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)

Commentors bagging Apple for defending its IP: not attorneys, and clearly shouldn't be.
 
Pretty soon we won't be able to speak properly

The really bad feature of this mess is not the suits, it's the ability to patent (or copywrite) ordinary words.

Apple, windows, amazon, kindle, vista, aperture, quicken and so on. If the government and the lawyers would act responsibly and void ALL personal rights to a word already in the official american english dictionary then we can have a MAC store to sell trucks, and apple stores in Washington State to sell apples without getting sued.

I would think Apple could pick a specific font, add an icon, add a specific color and we would find them and maybe let them own that. "Threepeat" was a great NEW word thought up, I think by Pat Riley, that would be reasonable. UNIX seems ok. As someone above rightly pointed out part of the high price of Apple's products, is giving them the right to own the name of a fruit that I was asking for by name and eating before Mr. Jobs was born. I do wish him well, but this ownership of ordinary words is unfair.
 
This is why Microsoft started by suing Apple; they know that with a granted trademark like "App Store" Apple can sue and abuse everybody else if their name has App Store in it.

I really don't know how people here can be negative to Microsoft suing Apple for this and positive for Apple suing Amazon. Talk about brainwash.
 
Can someone clarify this for me:

Apple is in charge of APP STORE (two words).

Amazon created APPSTORE (one word).

Are they the same?
 
In today's society, so many terms have become "generic" its nearly impossible to keep up with everything. Apple should win, but they won't. It's unfortunate.
 
LagunaSol said:
I dare you to develop an OS, call it Windows (sans the "Microsoft" part) and see what happens.

Ditto another completely generic brand name, Office.
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Uhhh.....Open Office?

And of course Windows can't be used for an OS, are you even following what people are saying? MS can't stop window stores from using Windows in the title, but surely they can defend it when related to non windows products that are in the software category.

An app store is JUST an app store. Hence the "grocery store" example I used earlier. I will spell it out even more clearly here.

Person 1 - "I am going to the grocery store for food."

Person 2 - "Which one?"

It's as generic as it gets and it applies to apps.

Person 1 - "I bought this game from the app store."

Person 2 - "Whose?"

See? The only problem here is if someone is myopic enough to think "the app store" should apply ONLY to Apple. I can't imagine being that foolish though. It IS a generic term for a place to buy software.
 
It looks Amazon and many others are purposely trying to steal Apple's business. There are so many ways to create a new name for the store. Why do they have to use the same name Apple selected? This is shame.
 
tzeshan said:
It looks Amazon and many others are purposely trying to steal Apple's business. There are so many ways to create a new name for the store. Why do they have to use the same name Apple selected? This is shame.
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The words 'bandwagon' jumping' and 'on' spring to mind.
 
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