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."

Comments

Apple == EVIL

[bleble]

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...

Re:Apple == EVIL

[PopeRatzo]

It's nothing new from Apple.

And no matter how you spin it, turn it upside down and examine it, try to put the most positive face on it, it is also hostile toward consumers.

Re:Apple == EVIL

[geekoid]

Apple tries to control what you can do with the device you bought, insist on getting money every time you want to do something with that device. The abuse the legal system, and twist contracts even if they have to 'shop for judges'

So, yeah, evil.

Could the be more evil? sure.

" activist judges"
I see the republican meme has gotten fully into your brain.

I wonder what would happen

[plover]

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."

Re:I wonder what would happen

[tknd]

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".

Well, it's obvious

[Chris Mattern]

"App store" is short for "Apple store"! Of *course* nobody else can use it! Not even if they're selling actual fruit!

So they maintain that App is short for "Apple"?

[elrous0]

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.

Re:So they maintain that App is short for "Apple"?

[Lemming42]

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.

boo hoo

[Kaenneth]

Maybe Apple needs a Kleenex(tm) to cry into and a Band-Aid(tm) to make it all better...

Re:Trademark law

[Ruke]

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.

Re:Imagination?

[medv4380]

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.

Re:Trademark law

[fahrbot-bot]

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.

Although, Jobs himself used the term generically. From the legal filing (excerpted from The Register):

"Apple further admits that its CEO, Steve Jobs, in October 2010 called the APP STORE service 'the easiest-to-use largest app store in the world, preloaded on every iPhone'."

While IANAL, I take the phrase "easiest-to-use, largest app store" to imply that there are others - presumably, smaller, harder to use - but, hey, that's just me, parsing English... Further quoting The Register article and filing - and this seems funny to me (emboldening mine):

Case in point: the filing also concedes that the Oxford English Dictionary defines an app as "[a]n application, esp. an application program," and that a store is, indeed, "a retail establishment selling items to the public: a health-food store."

These statements would seem to admit the obvious: that an app store is a store that sells apps. Apple, however, argues the opposite."Apple denies that, based on their common meaning, the words 'app store' together denote a store for apps," the filing reads.

About what other possible meaning the words "app store" might have, the Cupertinian oracle is silent.

Do I sound this whacked out when I get angry?

[spun]

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?

Re:Old news...?

[hairyfeet]

As someone who actually has a scar on the back of his head from a cop that said, and I quote "Fucking niggers and God damned hippies, i don't know which I hate more' (and BTW that "fucking nigger" I was driving was a baptist minister that was doing a mini tent revival tour to raise money for the homeless, whom I was playing bass for and driving as a favor and because I believed in the cause even though I'm an atheist, which he would always counter with "Just because you don't love God doesn't mean he doesn't love you"), allow me to say, from the bottom of my heart.....please get the panties out of your ass dude.

Jokes and satire are what we use to know only alleviate some of the hasher realities of this world we live in, but to also shine a light on people's misconceptions without being ugly about it. It is like what my GF who is Cherokee says when people start talking Spanish to her, assuming because she is brown she must be a Mexican "Me no Mexican, Me Cherokee, Me scalp your ass!" and by doing so sets the record straight without any preaching or PC bullshit (and always gets a laugh out of me when I see their faces).

So please, do get the panties out your ass, the sand out yo vagina, or however it is kids put quit being a stuck up prick these days. It is all the PC bullshit that leads us down the slope where you have "victim classes" and "hate crimes " (excuse me? If someone bashes my head in it don't count as much if my head is white? WTF?) and other "sensitivity" horseshit.

Oh and since I'm an atheist Irish/Creek Indian mix, feel free to make all the Godless Heathen, Drunken Mick, and Wild Injun jokes you like. If it is a good one I'll even be passing it around so please keep all jokes GPL or PD.

Now as for TFA? Apple is one of the most lawsuit happy corps bar none, so is anyone surprised? Everyone made a stink about MSFT and TomTom while ignoring the fact that MSFT offered TomTom (who are making money with their devices, not giving them away) the same RAND pricing they offer the flash manufacturers, no discrimination because they weren't using WinCE, and in the entire history of the company they've been the instigator of a whole 7 lawsuits in the company's history. I wonder how many Apple has started? because I bet it is a hell of a lot higher.