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Apple Sues Amazon.com, Seeks Order to Stop Use of 'App Store'
- wildmXranat 16y agoOn bad day for patents and law suits - when it rains, it pours.
- Jabbles 16y agoCould there be hope in arguing that "app store" is now a generic term for an online software shop?
- Cococabasa 16y agoApple did the "App Store". It reminds me of the Crayon story. Seems simple: wax drawing tool. But wooo! Crayola had to give up the name. Personally, it's a tough call. They are all Crayons, they are all App Stores. Not sure what the solution is.
- Cococabasa 16y agoIT'S CALLED AN APPLICATION STORE, NOT AN APP STORE.
- ZeroGravitas 16y agoWikipedia claims the word Crayon goes back to the 1600s, and has photos of boxes with the word "crayon" from 20 years before the company that became "Crayola" existed. So what name did they have to give up? http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Crayon http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Crayon Better examples from Wikipedia are: Aspirin, originally a trademark of Bayer AG Butterscotch, originally a trademark of Parkinson's Escalator, originally a trademark of Otis Elevator Company[4][5][6] Heroin, originally a trademark of Bayer AG Kerosene, originally a trademark of Abraham Gesner Phillips-head screw, named after Henry F. Phillips Pogo for the toy Pogo stick[6][7] Sellotape, a brandname of The Sellotape Company Thermos, originally a trademark of Thermos GmbH Tipp-Ex, originally a trademark of German manufacturers Tipp-Ex GmbH & Co. KG Yo-yo, originally a trademark of Duncan Yo-Yo Company Zipper, originally a trademark of B.F. Goodrich[6][8] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Genericized_trademark http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Genericized_trademark
- rch 16y agoAMZN: Buy
- sahillavingia 16y agoWhy (in relation to this)? Curious, because I just bought some.
- zackattack 16y agodo you not fear P/E contraction?
- hop 16y agoAMZN's P/E of 65 is historically massive, especially when others like Apple are at 19. You flip 65 upside down to get .0154, or 1.54% if you want to compare it to a bond. Steep price to pay, market must expect them to quadruple or so profit in the near future.
- schammy 16y agoI hope Microsoft succeeds in derailing this ridiculous trademark. "App Store" is way too generic. It's a "store" where you buy "applications". Apple is claiming Microsoft has a generic trademark too, for "Windows", but Windows does not generically describe the OS itself so it's valid in my opinion. "App Store", however, is not.
- grellas 16y agoApple is here making an ultra-aggressive attempt at a land grab in the world of application software. The mark granted to it is for "App Store". Under relevant trademark law, a mark cannot be registered if it consists solely of a generic or purely descriptive term. "Store" is generic. So too is the word "application" - which is commonly thought of as being what the word "app" refers to. Therefore, no trademark could ever be registered for the word "store" or for the word "application" and certainly not for "application store" (no trademark can be registered when all of its constituent elements are generic). A trademark identifies the origin of goods or services and no one vendor can claim that a whole generic category of goods or services can be set out as a domain for which it and it alone is the origin. The question is, does any of this change because Apple's claim is for the word "app" as opposed to "application." Apple claims that "app" in this context is a word that refers uniquely to Apple in the public mind - that is, when a typical consumer hears of an "app," that person immediately associates that word with "Apple app" and not with the generic term "application." In legal parlance, then, Apple is arguing that the word "app" here has an "arbitrary" meaning and is therefore registrable to Apple alone. If Apple prevails on this claim, it will be able to sue anyone in the future who tries to sell "apps" through any form of "app store." Of course, many other vendors are using the "app" designation for selling online applications and there is thus vigorous opposition to Apple's application. Indeed, once the trademark examiner granted the application, Amazon immediately filed a proceeding contesting it. To date, then, Apple does not have any definitive determination in its favor on this issue. By continuing to push the trademark application, and by filing this lawsuit, Apple hopes to pave the way to have exclusive use going forward of "App Store" as against all competitors. I think Apple is overstepping it on this one. If it should be granted what it seeks, how will other vendors be able to refer even generically to what they are offering? Trademark law is intended to protect a company's distinct offerings and to prevent others from pawning off a vendor's good will by passing their goods or services off as that of their real owner. I doubt that anyboday will believe that what Amazon or Google or any of a number of other vendors offer is an attempt to trade on Apple's goodwill. On the other hand, trademark law is not intended to give anybody any form of exclusivity in describing generic categories of goods or services. That appears to be precisely what Apple is here attempting to do. Apple has one more obstacle to overcome as well. A term that is at some point a distinctive identifier of a vendor's goods or services can become generic over time (consider "yo-yo,"aspirin," "escalator," and many others that have suffered this fate). If "app" was at one time distinctive to Apple a few years back, I seriously doubt that the public today thinks of it as anything other than a generic indicator of what you can download from a wide variety of sources.
- SriniK 16y agoWonder what were apple thinking when they used iphone which clearly belonged to Cisco. http://gizmodo.com/#!227504/cisco-is-expecting-signed-agreement-on-iphone-trademark-today http://gizmodo.com/#!227504/cisco-is-expecting-signed-agreem... These names are so common and apple fighting over is lame.
- nika 16y agoMaybe they were thinking they could buy the name from cisco, which is what happened pretty soon after. Have you considered the possibility that Apple had talked to cisco quite a bit prior to announcing the iPhone, and knew they were going to be able to acquire the name, and the subsequent "noise" cisco made about suing apple was a negotiating tactic? Their agreement was pretty mild-- cisco wanted apple to support its VPN technology on the iPhones which they did. Apple generally, if it finds someone else owns a name it wants that doesn't already infringe on one of Apple's names, buys the name from them. It doesn't just copy the name and wait to be sued, as Amazon did here.
- entrepreneurial 16y agoCan't they just change it to App Market?
- eoghan 16y agoBoth Apple and Amazon are run by two of the smartest businessmen in the world. For Amazon's part, they're attracted to the phrase "app store" because: a. due to Apple's efforts, the phrase has gained an amount of familiarity and also b. it's simply a good name. If only Apple products have this "app store" thing, they have another unique offering. But if you can access an "app store" from any device, there's less incentive for the consumer to specifically buy an iPad (over a Kindle, for example). For Apple's part, they know right well that they're pushing it by contesting their exclusive right to the generic phrase "app store". But for the reasons outlined above, it's very much in their interests to prevent others from using it and they have relatively little to lose by going to court to attempt to do so.
- mpk 16y ago> a. due to Apple's efforts, the phrase has gained an amount of familiarity and also b. it's simply a good name. +1 glad to see someone's paying attention :) The term 'App Store' is being used by a lot of vendors operating in the cloud/mobile space. It's familiar and when you use it people have an idea of what the offering is. If Apple can keep the association of 'App Store' an Apple exclusive that gives their brand more value. That's why they're going after a big company instead of a small one. If they can win this against Amazon they almost automatically crush all other uses of the mark by smaller companies. If they lose they only lose a few million. That's not going to make a dent in their budget. Small risk / big payoff.
- gs8 16y agoToday's News Summary: Apple = Trademark Troll Microsoft = Patent Troll AT&T = Monopoly If Amazon fights this they could win and it could be good news for everyone, except Apple. p.s. Yes I know Amazon is a patent troll as well.
- die_sekte 16y agoTrolls trolling trolls. As always.
- JoeCortopassi 16y agoHow the heck is AT&T a monopoly?
- aphexairlines 16y agoThe only GSM carrier left in the US?
- Cococabasa 16y agoI saw Amazon pull this stunt a few days ago. No respect for software developers? I think that's it!
- dpcan 16y agoI was wondering when this would happen.
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- teyc 16y agoThey should just call it Amazn Store.
- dhughes 16y ago'App' is short for application I guess that's the problem so Amazon should come up with their own shortened version I suggest 'appl'
- radley 16y agoIsn't this a parry to Amazon's One Click patent? Certainly an interesting way to negate the fees...
- geekfactor 16y agoThe Apple "App Store" trademark: http://tess2.uspto.gov/bin/showfield?f=doc&state=4009:jgea6f.4.1 http://tess2.uspto.gov/bin/showfield?f=doc&state=4009:jg...
- Enlightenment 16y agoAmazon should rename it to "App Hole".
- kleptco 16y agoEveryone knows the "App" in "App Store" is short for "Apple".
- thomasz 16y agoSo, how many Apple computers can I buy in the Apple App Store?
- Garbage 16y agoAre they trying to trademark "jobs" as well?
- Yaggo 16y agoCommon words or not, nobody was using the term 'App Store' before Apple made it popular (after popularizing smartphone apps). Suddenly everyone wants to have their own App Stores (after making their own iPhone clones). Please, let Apple have its App Store and come up with something original. Cannot be so hard.
- nooneelse 16y agoBut plenty of people were talking about "web apps" before the iPhone. Which shows that "app" is not distinctive or unique. Nor is "store" distinctive.
- vacri 16y agoApple said 'No'.
- kluivers 16y ago"People thinking 'app store' was in use before Apple's have bad memories - http://www.google.com/trends?q=app+store http://www.google.com/trends?q=app+store ", @treestman