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Amazon Responds To "App Store" Lawsuit From Apple
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."
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
I think the "news" is that Amazon has responded with exactly what everyone had already predicted they'd respond with:
"App Store" is too generic.
App shop, App mart, App mall, App stand, Apptorium, Appmania, App warehouse.
I'm pretty sure they don't sell Apples. Trademarking your recording company Apple is fine. Trademarking your computer company Apple is fine. Trademarking your stand that sells fruit "Apple Store" and hence not letting anyone else who sells apples call them self an "Apple Store" isn't (well ok, shouldn't be, who knows what the courts will decide...)
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.
Amazon quotes Apple chief executive Steve Jobs in the filing referring to the iTunes App Store as "the easiest to use, largest app store in the world".
http://www.v3.co.uk/v3-uk/mac-inspector-blog/2046035/amazon-files-response-apples-app-store-suit
I am a free slashdotter. I will not be modded, blogged, DRM'd, patented, podcasted or RFID'd. My life is my own.
Realism time - at first App Store seems generic. But when, before the Apple "App Store" launched, did anyone ever use the term "app" outside of a restaurant?
That's the key thing. The slang if you will, is something Apple developed. Like Kleenex or Windows it sounds generic, but that's because it's so widely used now that you think of it as generic when the term really originated with Apple.
So I don't think it's that silly a suit at all, though I don't care who wins it. I just think there's more of a point to it than most here would credit.
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
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
Yeah, the term "App store" is pretty generic, however, in the context of what Amazon's looking to do with the term, it's pretty blatant that they'd choose that name to sell mobile applications on branded equipment, particularly when Apple has stuck it's neck out in such a way that it may in fact cause some confusion for non-tech minded folks.
Non impediti ratione cogitationus.
Why is it that companies seem to think that they can cordon off words from the natural language wordspace and treat them as private "property"? The fact that their governments give them a piece of paper confirming ownership merely shifts the question, because governments don't have any inherent rights over the wordspace either.
The phrase that Apple might rightly consider theirs in the US market is "Apple App Store", but even that should not be treated as exclusive if Apple Records or Apple Corps or some other Apple ever wanted to open an app store.
When you adopt a generic term as part of the your product name, you have to live with the consequences of non-exclusivity.
"The question of whether machines can think is no more interesting than [] whether submarines can swim" - Dijkstra
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.
According to a related article at The Register, as recently as October of 2010, Steve Jobs himself publicly called Apple's app store "the easiest-to-use, largest app store in the world, preloaded on every iPhone." So it would appear that even Cupertino is using the phrase app store generically in reference to its competitors. I'd call this tidbit a crushing blow to Apple's case.
Thanks, Steve! We all app-reciate it.
Apple should open an Apple store in Belem do Para (Brazil) which is a major city at the mouth of the Amazon. It would be the Apple Amazon store.
Some drink at the fountain of knowledge. Others just gargle.
I posted something about this general sort of stuff earlier (http://slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=2089310&cid=35863126) and I think this is more of the same. Apple is worried. Their massive growth has all been as a consumer electronics company. Their original product, the iPod, has really leveled off. Don't get me wrong, they still make money on it but the market is pretty saturated. Their new growth has been iToys.
Well Android presents a real threat to that. When it first came out I wouldn't have said so. The initial Android offerings weren't bad, but they weren't the same level of consumer friendly and as good a toy as iOS. That has changed. New Android devices, particularly those with the Sense UI, are easy to use, good looking, powerful, etc, etc. It is a real threat to Apple, so they are lashing out.
Same shit with the app store. If they can squash Amazon's use of it that puts them in a strong position to go after Google's use of it. Try to make Apple the only platform that has a "app store".
I had totally forgotten about "Killer App", which is obviously the use everyone would recognize instantly... but I had not been aware of really any other app uses, which your google search illustrated quite well. So I'm totally wrong on that point.
I guess Apple's case then rests wholly on the combination of "App" and "Store" then, which still may get them somewhere...
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
context
-noun
the set of circumstances or facts that surround a particular event, situation, etc.
In the context of operating systems, Windows isn't generic. In the context of electronic devices Companies, Apple isn't generic.
In the context of app stores, "App Store" is generic.
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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.
Dude, that IS twitter. He's back! Oh, how I missed that entertainment.
For the record though - the reboot is actually because of the only thing in the world with such unparalleled shittyness that nothing could possibly beat it: Adobe.
Personally, I kind of like Win7, though I still kind of dislike Microsoft.
For a site about things like basic rights, Slashdot users sure do like to censor "dissent".
In case you didn't notice, Appz is rather unlike App. Also that domain is based around the concept of "Warez", more than a shortened form of Application.
In any case the idea and name AppStore was around before Apple's App Store and was also a place to buy Applications from.