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Amazon Responds To "App Store" Lawsuit From Apple

Posted by samzenpus on from the make-up-your-own-name dept.

tekgoblin writes "Apple had filed a lawsuit in March against Amazon's use of 'App Store' in their newly launched Amazon AppStore. Apple had informed Amazon that using the term 'App Store' was unlawful because they owned the rights to the term itself. In their response Amazon indicates that the term 'App Store' is too generic for Apple to lay claim to the name itself."

11 of 414 comments (clear)

  1. Dear God... by bigstrat2003 · · Score: 4, Insightful

    For the love of sanity, please let Amazon win this one. I don't know if I want to live in a country where justice is so blind that it allows trademarking the name of the category a thing belongs to as the proper name of that thing.

    --
    "16MB (fuck off, MiB fascists)" - The Mighty Buzzard
    1. Re:Dear God... by recoiledsnake · · Score: 5, Insightful

      You mean like things like "Windows" right?

      Please, stop making absurd comparisons. "Windows" doesn't really describe the product itself. If MS trademarked "Operating System" and then sued Red Hat for calling their OS "Red Hat Operating System", then it would a similar comparison. i.e Windows is not a generic term for the product itself, unlike "app store".

      --
      This space for rent.
    2. Re:Dear God... by jmac_the_man · · Score: 4, Insightful

      You can still use the UI elements called Windows. You can still call them Windows. You can't call your operating system Windows. That's wildly different.

    3. Re:Dear God... by fahrbot-bot · · Score: 4, Insightful

      Presumably the action will be on the question of whether "App" is a protectable term.

      Don't be silly. I'm sure Apple is objecting to the use of the word "Store". :-)

      --
      It must have been something you assimilated. . . .
    4. Re:Dear God... by catmistake · · Score: 2, Insightful

      ... where justice is so blind that it allows trademarking the name of the category a thing belongs to as the proper name of that thing.

      Oh, no! Did Apple register trademarks for Package Manager and Software Repository ?! Those bastards! It's too bad Amazon (and Microsoft) can't possibly think up something new or different now, like, say, App Market, or Application Cafe, or the Amazon Repo, or Software Grocery. OR ANYTHING AT ALL. Amazon could call it the Shoe Store, and it wouldn't matter, we'd all know what it really was. How did Cydia come up with it's own name? HOW??!

      --
      The Admin and the Engineer
  2. Other names by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 2, Insightful

    App shop, App mart, App mall, App stand, Apptorium, Appmania, App warehouse.

  3. Re:they owned the rights to the term itself by recoiledsnake · · Score: 1, Insightful

    Imagine a company selling apples trademarking the term 'apple' and then suing other companies for calling their products apples. That is similar to what is happening here, not using Apple to sell music or computers.

    --
    This space for rent.
  4. Re:Android is the real target by sconeu · · Score: 3, Insightful

    through the use and abuse of stupid patents.

    You do realize that this is about Trademarks and not Patents, right?

    --
    General Relativity: Space-time tells matter where to go; Matter tells space-time what shape to be.
  5. Re:uhhh by dmbasso · · Score: 3, Insightful

    And the sad thing is that this comes from the company that patented the "genius" 1-click buying.

    --
    `echo $[0x853204FA81]|tr 0-9 ionbsdeaml`@gmail.com
  6. Re:Container Store? by jedidiah · · Score: 4, Insightful

    I am against a sloppy application of the law.

    The fact that a certain sort of nonsense was tolerated before really doesn't matter.

    This isn't about being "against trademarks". Thats just stupid bad rhetoric.

    This is about being against trademarks that fail the basic rules for being an enforceable trademark.

    Being against this sort of nonsense is like advocating that the speed limit be enforced.

    --
    A Pirate and a Puritan look the same on a balance sheet.
  7. Re:Just like Windows, apples and amazons by shutdown+-p+now · · Score: 3, Insightful

    Windows is not a generic term when applied to an OS, because the word "windows" does not denote "OS". It denotes a completely different thing. Therefore, using this name to name an OS makes it an enforceable trademark. Same logic applies to Amazon.

    On the other hand, "App Store" is a generic term that describes an application store. Consequently, it cannot be trademarked as a name of an application store. In a similar vein, Microsoft cannot trademark "OS" as a name of its operating system, and Amazon cannot trademark "online store" as a name for its online store.