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Apple: an 'App Store' Is Not a Store For Apps
recoiledsnake writes "What would be your first guess about what an app store sells? Don't be fooled, Apple warns, the phrase 'app store' is not generic and can only be used to describe Cupertino's... um, app store? 'Apple denies that, based on their common meaning, the words "app store" together denote a store for apps,' Apple said in a Thursday filing with a California district court. All this notwithstanding that Jobs himself used the phrase generically while referring to Android app stores. We've previously discussed this ongoing legal battle."
Well, yeah. However, this isn't a "defend your patent or lose it," case where a patent-holder is forced to defend their trivial feature even though they don't really care to; Apple applied for the "AppStore" trademark exactly for this eventuality. They don't want anyone else to be able to use the phrase "App Store" to refer to a place where you can buy apps.
So, how is this at all different from the way Apple has been making the same claim for the past several weeks?
Slashdot needs to serve ads and Apple hasn't done anything else to bitch about.
"I like to lick butts!" by MobileTatsu-NJG (#32700246) (Score:5, Informative)
This strangely echoes the fight between MCA and Nintendo over the name "Donkey Kong".
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Universal_City_Studios,_Inc._v._Nintendo_Co.,_Ltd.
MCA claimed that Donkey Kong infringed on their "King Kong" trademark, Nintendo won the battle when they showed that MCA had previously argued (and won) that King Kong and its characters were already in the public domain.
Just in case you're not a troll and really are this miss informed about those words your throwing about as Mutually Exclusive when they really are Generic Terms. Here is a News Paper Scan from the now about-to-be-abandoned scan archive. See the Date Feb 27, 1997 along with office 97 all highlighted for you.
Actually the populace can reduce the effectiveness of a trademark by genericizing it. If everyone from your grandmother to your 5 year old nephew began using "app" and "app store" as everyday jargon, the trademark would be genericized and has reduced legal protection.
So if you want to annoy Jobs and co, all you have to do is start referring to any software as an "app" and any outlet that sells software as an "app store" regardless of if it is or is not owned or run by Apple.
Some examples of companies that suffered from this effect are the term "googling" instead of "searching" and use of "kleenex" instead of "tissue".
app has been used to describe applications long before Apple decided to also.
Apple has been using the term and suffix .app since it bought NeXT
My 1985 Atari ST with GEM used .app as extension for applications (and .prg for programs. Apparently there was a difference).
"start GEM and run INSTALL.APP"
http://www.retroarchive.org/cpm/archive/unofficial/gemworld.html
it's in my head
Google started using the word App in 2006 for Google Apps (well before the Apple trademark application in 2008).
App was a buzzword in 2002 for Microsoft 95/98 application development.
Numerous references exist for making an "app" in various perl and php forums around 2000.
A killer app for computer chat published in the Economist in 1999.
Article titled "The Killer App" published in the Harvard Business Review in 1998
App Launcher software patcher circa 1998.
"DOS App" used on uunet in 1994...
And that is just from a few minutes of googling...
Apple did not invent the term "App" as a word.