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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."
So, how is this at all different from the way Apple has been making the same claim for the past several weeks?
It's nothing new from Apple. Remember that Apple always ignores everyones patents when it doesn't feel like paying for them (all the Nokia thing), but if someone else uses their patents Apple sues them. Same thing here. Apple and Steve Jobs are just being retards and think they can do whatever they want. And still MS gets blamed for being evil and Apple with its fully closed garden is some kind of white knight...
if they simply ignored Apple? If someone came around to shut them down, they'd say "Really? You think our app store is confusingly called an App Store? Go away and grow some common sense."
John
If Apple doesn't defend their trademark, they lose it. Thank our wonderful legal system for this stuff.
Black is white, down is up, right is left, and an App Store is not an App Store.
Riiiight.
Twitter supports and protects racists - by smearing their critics with the "Hate Speech" label.
"App store" is short for "Apple store"! Of *course* nobody else can use it! Not even if they're selling actual fruit!
If the "App" is short for "Apple" (as they're presumably arguing), then that means that they're calling their online applications store the "Apple Store," which seems to conflict with their physical hardware-oriented stores of the same name. Methinks that would indicated that "Apple" was not what they meant there.
Now, if you'll excuse me, I'm going to listen to the Beatles on the Apple record label. Of course, in that case, Apple argued that "Apple" was a generic term. I guess things have changed.
SJW: Someone who has run out of real oppression, and has to fake it.
Maybe Apple needs a Kleenex(tm) to cry into and a Band-Aid(tm) to make it all better...
Am I getting old and senile, or didn't Microsoft try something like this and get shot down when they tried to trademark the word "windows"? It was allowed in reference to an operating system, but not across the board for all thigs that were or could be a window... Yeh, I'm probably senile.
Stone
I don't know in what world you're living, but I have been using the term "app" for applications/programs/software years before the iPhone was released.
Just because you might never have heard the term except in the context of Apple doesn't mean it wasn't used elsewhere.
And by the way, when taking about linux I hardly ever use the word 'software'. The simple world where everything fits nicely into a drawer doesn't exist.
I sure hope that Groklaw keeps us informed about Apple's litiguous behavior. Next thing you know is that Apple will tell us is that Ivey never heard of the IBM Simon when coming up with the iphone touch interface.
Part of the difference between Apps and Applications as soon as Apps made it into the mainstream Macintosh OS not just i[Phone] OS, was that Apps are trusted pieces of software through the App Store, while Applications were dirty malware ridden software you got off of the internet that isn't trusted and signed by Apple. To allow App to mean a shortened version of Application again means for it to be okay to download software that Apple doesn't approve of.
Also, if you ask some people, it has always been "Executable Binaries" on *nix systems based on different terminologies used between UNIX falvors and Kinuix distros, and occasionally just to be contrary and start a fight.
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.
"When I use a word," Steve Jobs said, in rather a scornful tone, "it means just what I choose it to mean — neither more nor less."
You didn't get the memo? We call regular windows light orifaces now. An example. Jack lost his ball when it went through sally's light oriface popping the virgin oriface and hitting Sally's baby on the head.
Awesome!
The ExBin Store!
You heard it here first folks, so it's mine... all mine !!
Why? It's not a store where they sell APPL shares. /duck
As long as it's not Plaid.
They're just creative ways to get around laws restraining these things locally.
God spoke to me.
OK. I'm a fan but this is just a matter of marketing and legal doing a circle jerk. I find it hard to picture a more offensive scenario but those are the hard facts of business.
TCAP-Abort
You're ether poorly trying to communicate sarcasm or your a deliberate troll.
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.
You might not be aware but besides Apps on OS X being stored in the /Applications directory, every app on OS X has had the .app extension whereas programs on dos/windows had the extensions of either .exe or .com. Given that Apple's desktop OS was using the .app extension to denote user facing Application packages/launchers, I would say that Apple has the strongest claim to "App" and "App store".
Jesus was a compassionate social conservative who called individuals to sin no more.
Then Apple starts using Apps, coins the App Store
Yeah, just like they "coined" the term "podcast" and only then did podcasting get popular....</sarcasm>
As if I hadn't been making "Web Apps" for the Century previous to their filing... before that, BBS Apps, such as my ASCII Tetris & pong apps, and the "ANSI-APP" series of DOS-to-Win95 era text-GUI programs that ran locally or remotely via my text-only "compositing" window manager (using ANSI + ASCII w/ CP437). Note esp: "ANSI-APP" because 8 (dot) 3 file names were the norm at the time. (We abbreviated fn-every.tng back then.)
Just because the mainstream public is ignoant of a term's use doesn't mean it's not in use and/or a popular term among many.
The fact that Apple was allowed to trademark "podcast" even though that medium was well established without their input should be a clue that the "App Store" trademark is bullshit. After Apple's clone of the iRiver, the iPod, became popular they ran around trademarking all iXxxx and podXxx names, esp. names with any popularity that were already in use. Now they're doing the same thing with App because that's a popular term.
Should this be allowed? No.
Is it proof that the USPTO is full of inept lawyers? Yep.
( For fuck's sake -- The same group that granted Apple the "App Store" trademark also let someone patent swinging on a swing! -- Of course the courts need to be involved, the PTO is full of morons; They're so out of touch with today's world, the only things that exist to them are what's in their databases.)
That would be the Aapl Store >.>
Not Plaid. iPlaid.
I have been calling the software that does stuff applications (on any platform) since 1984. I believe 1984 predates the iphone by a few years. I know that the computer makers called them different things over the years, but I have been calling software "applications" or "apps" for years before the iphone came out. I can remember many people calling software apps in 1990-1991. This was by people who had to ask how to turn on the computer. They also used programs or applications. It did not matter what computer they were going to use. My sister used all three terms when referring to software on a mac or a pc. The pc was a new 486 and the mac was her mac she got for college in 1990. The term app has been used by people for years before the app store came out. The whole idea that only since the iphone do people call software "apps" is wrong.
Otherwise a low end PC would cost thousands, parts would only be available from Apple, and cost a premium and innovation would have been stunted.
Also I Sincerely doubt Steve Jobs is going to give much of his fortune away to make the world a better place, like Bill Gates is.
(If at first you don't succeed, do it different next time!)
Really, Apple? REALLY? Who are you trying to fool? Google?
Killer apps 1995
Now that sounds like an insanely great idea.
Ahahahaha, oh my. Seriously? You fail reading comprehension, my lefty comrade. You fail hard. And you must not be much of a leftist AT ALL, or you would know what the term means. "Hippie punching" refers not to any sort of physical violence, it refers to the fact that even on the left, politicians try to find someone to the left of them to attack.
When Rahm Emmanuel called leftists "Fucking retards," THAT was hippie punching. In fact, there was a huge shitstorm over it where just about everyone on the left was using the term "hippie punching" and accusing the White House of it. Sorry we forgot to call and tell you about all the fun.
When I was volunteering with Food Not Bombs in San Francisco and the cops threw me to the ground, stood on my shoulder blades, zip-tied my hands and pulled up HARD on my arms, that was not hippie punching. That was just plain old police violence.
See the difference? Generally, only those on the left get accused of hippie punching, because on the right, it is just par for the course. Man bites dog and all that.
Shit.
You do know I am not actually advocating biting a dog here, right?
- None can love freedom heartily, but good men; the rest love not freedom, but license. -- John Milton
let's just let them have it and soon they'll be bored with it. In the meantime we can find something else to play with. If they've cornered to market on Apps, let's start calling our widgets 'Lications. "Check out all the downloadable content on Amazon's new 'Lication Station."
The "App Store" isn't a store for "apps"; it's a store for crApps (crappy applications). They're mostly shitty programs that don't have much functionality and/or are simply wrappers around WebKit that only allow access to a single website.
Well... It's obvious -- not from the effing article, but from reality -- that when Apple patented the term "App Store", the competition didn't give a damn.
Now that Apple got success with their "app[lication] store" and with phrases like "there's an app for that", competition wants to downplay that. They say: we also have "apps", not just Apple.
My point is: it's not about the term being generic; it's about what Apple intended when they started using the term "app" for marketing purposes and patented the derivative term "app store". It's about Apple defending their strategy. The "app store" patent is important for that and the patent was granted, so they have to enforce it.
In the end, all of this only proves that patents are ridiculous. Apple themselves used the "Windows" trademark as an example...
I know it seem insanely obvious now, but the term didn't really gain traction until Apple came out with the iPhone around 2007. Don't believe me, then believe Google Trends.
I'm pretty sure others (like MS) were using terms like marketplace, download center, central, etc. before they decided to jump on the App Store band wagon
The real Sig captains the Northwestern. This one captains
agreed, I remember back in the days of dialup and AOL, we had "apps" that would add function to the clients. So I can say I remember the term "app" from 96, im sure there are some others who have known the term longer.
have you seen my sig? there are many others like it but none that are the same
This would mean that if Safeway trademarked the term 'Grocery Store', then Kroger, Albertson's, A&P et al would not be able to call themselves grocery stores. Apple needs to be slapped down on this one. Steve Jobs needs to slap someone on the inside down, too. 'App store' may or may not have been used prior to Apple's usage, but the concept has been around as long as updating over the Internet has been feasible. 'iTunes App Store' can be trademarked, 'app store' cannot.
Nothing to see here but us trolls...move along...
Soooo your saying that someone comes along 10 or 20 years AFTER the term has been commonly used in its generic sense for that period of time and they suddenly have a stronger claim to it then anyone else in the industry? Do you realise how fucking dumb that sounds?
But an online store is any store that sells things online, like e.g. Amazon. It's not specifically a place where I can buy apps.
The Tao of math: The numbers you can count are not the real numbers.
.app in 1985: http://apple.slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=2173906&cid=36196908
it's in my head
In my company our software development group is referred to as App Dev and has been since long before the app store.
"Coined" the top rung of the distinctiveness ladder in trademark law. (The others are "arbitrary", "suggestive", "descriptive", and "generic".) As I understand it, it denotes a word created by the producer of a good or service specifically to be the distinctive mark for that service.
Xerox can [trademark] a shortening of the term Xerography ("dry printing").
But where did the second X come from? That's a big part of what makes it a coined term.
Apple has been using the term and suffix .app since it bought NeXT.
As have distributors of warez, in the "appz" section. Compare the refrain of "The Warez Song" by Test of Time, released on MP3.com in either 1999 or 2000: "One more game, one more app, one more serial, one more crack, warez are the only thing for me."
So if Windows can bar Lindows
Microsoft settled with Lindows because Lindows had too much of a chance to win the lawsuit and prove "windows" generic or descriptive at most. Small-w windows had been part of operating systems since the X Window System if not Mac OS before it.
Go ask Yahoo if Yahoo is copyrighted.
No, it's trademarked. The term was invented by Jonathan Swift to refer to a fictional human society lacking in effective hygiene, found on the island of the Houyhnhnms in the 1726 satiric novel Travels into Several Remote Nations. Like Apple and Amazon, the Yahoo! mark is arbitrary, which one step below an original coinage. But "app" was used generically for computer programs long before iOS 2, and the dispute here is whether "app store" has acquired a strong enough secondary meaning associated with Apple Inc. A jury will probably have to decide that.
Just because i'm spewing Marketing's reasoning doesn't make it sound =P
Did you hear the one about the nigger with a job?
Me neither.
How do you know that you have a Jew living next door?
Your land and water is stolen, while your neighborhood association is bribed to look the other way.
What's the difference between a Zionist and a Nazi?
50 years.
I'm confused. Can I still punch a hippie or did you explain away my justification for it?
This kind of garbage is why I think corporations should have a limit on the number of lawsuits they can inflict in a year. On customers who tinker with their product OS's, small businesses who didn't follow the AUP, etc. That would make them think before they go throwing frivolous fodder suits around like this. Sony's just as guilty. People are lawsuit happy because there's no threat if they're only 'mistaken' on the matter. And corporations PAY people to find things to sue over. So they're several times worse. Put a cap on the number of lawsuit cases they can make in a 365 day period and even Sony's legal department will turn a blind eye on some guy in Missouri with a voided console if they hear rumors that Microsoft might be planning to make a 'Play Station' named product at the end of the year.
In other news coming to hand, "Free Software" doesn't mean the software is free of cost.
Duh.
http://video.adultswim.com/frisky-dingo/guys-nibblies.html
Apple denies that, based on their common meaning, the words "app store" together denote a store for apps
In other words, Apple denies the basic constructs of the English language. *facepalm*
Right up there with there being no Windows in any other OS.
If Apple lose, then Microsoft should be worried...
Unlike a cheese store, that sells cheese, an app store is not a store for apps.
An app store might be an apple store. With app for apple. Like iHeadache which means icecream headache.
That sounds reasonable. App Store is short for "apple store". We see similar abbreviations with words like "potential head".
app store
crack whore
pot head
ding bat
File under 'M' for 'Manic ranting'
And car dealerships don't sell cars either .... oh wait
Given that Apple's desktop OS was using the .app extension to denote user facing Application packages/launchers, I would say that Apple has the strongest claim to "App" and "App store".
The problem with your notion is that before Apple even existed, programs which existed to perform a task were already called "application programs". Also, if you REALLY had anything to contribute to this conversation you would have known the type(1) of pre-OSX MacOS applications and mentioned it, because OSX inherited "apps" from NeXTStep, which inherited them from Apple because much of what NeXT did was a direct copy of Apple (though most of it was an improvement.)
(1) Wow it took me a long time to find a nice citation for that. All my searches got a lot of crap with .app in it.
"You're right," Fisheye says. "I should have set it on 'whip' or 'chop.'"
Let's shorten Application Store.
AppStore is apparently taken.
How about ApplStore?
Help! I'm a slashdot refugee.
It's part of APPle. Naturally.
They can convince iPhone and iPad owners to pay too much for their devices AND advertise for Apple without payment every time they send a message.
Everything Apple says is true. Because. They said it. Naturally.
Yeah, but no one is FORCING consumers to buy Apple products. Someone who gives you a bad deal that you know about ahead of time isn't necessarily evil. Someone who takes a bad deal they know about ahead of time is foolish.
why? MS doesn't have any trademarks for any product that is the GUI element called a 'window'.