4 ms·

Trademarks are allowed to be 'generic' English words, they just can't be purely descriptive of the product/service/company. You can't trademark a name like 'Com

Trademarks are allowed to be 'generic' English words, they just can't be purely descriptive of the product/service/company. You can't trademark a name like 'Computer Store' for your computer store, for example. In the cases you list, I don't think any of these purely describe the app/feature's function (these are pretty opaque names actually, except maybe Soundtrack and Aperture), so should be eligible. 'App Store', 'Multi-Touch', 'FaceID', and others that Apple claims though are definitely questionable IMO. When you have to jump through linguistic hoops to describe your product because someone's trademarked the obvious descriptive language, there's a problem. I don't know either. I guess, considering how the legal system generally works in the US, that someone would have to legally challenge their validity, and nobody wants to go against Apple in court. To be fair I'd say most of the trademarks they claim are pretty reasonable, though: https://www.apple.com/legal/intellectual-property/trademark/appletmlist.html https://www.apple.com/legal/intellectual-property/trademark/... Edit: Did a bit of looking into the App Store trademark and it looks like both Amazon and Microsoft did challenge this, but both settled out of court with unknown terms, and the trademark stands as a result.

nerdponx 4y ago
> Edit: Did a bit of looking into the App Store trademark and it looks like both Amazon and Microsoft did challenge this, but both settled out of court with unknown terms, and the trademark stands as a result. This is a great example of how the USA legal system is broken. The responsibility for preventing bad trademarks from being registered should not lie with other gigantic companies, which have as much incentive to collude as to compete. Now the public suffers because the bad trademark stands, and the people who are likely to be harmed by trademark trolling (smaller companies that do not have the money to fight Apple's questionable trademark) remain at risk of harm, potentially indefinitely, because trademarks don't expire under US law. If the case went through the full court system, then at least the outcome would be decided in the public eye and could be said to have been fairly evaluated and decided. A settlement is as if the case never happened at all!

nerdponx 4y ago

> Edit: Did a bit of looking into the App Store trademark and it looks like both Amazon and Microsoft did challenge this, but both settled out of court with unknown terms, and the trademark stands as a result. This is a great example of how the USA legal system is broken. The responsibility for preventing bad trademarks from being registered should not lie with other gigantic companies, which have as much incentive to collude as to compete. Now the public suffers because the bad trademark stands, and the people who are likely to be harmed by trademark trolling (smaller companies that do not have the money to fight Apple's questionable trademark) remain at risk of harm, potentially indefinitely, because trademarks don't expire under US law. If the case went through the full court system, then at least the outcome would be decided in the public eye and could be said to have been fairly evaluated and decided. A settlement is as if the case never happened at all!