Apple Loses Claim For False Advertising Regarding Amazon "App Store"

An anonymous reader writes a court has dismissed Apple's allegations that Amazon's use of the "app store" phrase constituted false advertising. "Apple's efforts to protect its intellectual property sometimes result in lawsuits that leave even the most ardent of Apple fans scratching their heads. One such suit was Apple's March 2011 lawsuit against Amazon over the retailer's use of the phrase 'app store' as used in its Amazon Appstore for Android. "

Comments

Re:i is for idiot.

[Anonymous Coward]

Apple is for Asshole

Consequences

[AmiMoJo]

Why are there no severe consequences for bringing these kinds of ridiculous lawsuits? Shouldn't Amazon at least get all their legal fees paid?

Re:Consequences

[macs4all]

Why are there no severe consequences for bringing these kinds of ridiculous lawsuits? Shouldn't Amazon at least get all their legal fees paid?

IF it were actually Frivolous, that might be possible.

However, Apple did have an "App Store" (by that name) before anyone else. The name was "catchy" enough to resonate with Consumers. IANAL, and I haven't read the decision, but I personally believe that the phrase "App Store" should have been Trade Mark-able, as it was not being used by anyone before Apple.

Re:Consequences

[Skapare]

I don't know WHY our legal system is so faulty, but it is. NO ONE (and ONE includes any business) should be subjected to costs because someone else just happens to disagree. If someone sues YOU and in order to defend yourself, you need to hire attorney(s) at a cost of tens of thousands of dollars (which for some people can wipe them out, financially), wouldn't you want the other party to cover your costs? I most certainly would. Maybe for Amazon the multi-million dollar cost of this suit is a minor amount. But for many people, even just a ten thousand dollar lawsuit can be most of what they have.

This is one reason lots of people don't even show up in court when sued. This is one reason the courts end up with so many bad judgments because they always favor the party that showed up.

This is just wrong because it is very unfair.

But even having the losing party pay doesn't always work, and it doesn't do a very good job of making things fair.

I propose the following. Create a litigation finance pool that is covered through corporate taxes (without any loopholes). Every corporation or other business pays into this pool. When they are involved in litigation, it gets covered by this pool. Yes, I know this is so open for abuses, so it most certainly needs to be very strictly monitored. The winner gets their legal costs covered from the pool. The loser does not.

The above applies to all cases involving a business on either side. A separate pool funded through a wider tax base is for people to people cases. This is not a perfect solution. But what we have now is certainly not perfect, either, and is actually worse.

Frivolous lawsuits need to result in jail time.

Re:Consequences

[SourceFrog]

I propose the following. Create a litigation finance pool that is covered through corporate taxes ... When they are involved in litigation, it gets covered by this pool

Wow, a million lawyers just sprung erections and drooled all over themselves.

This really won't work well, as it creates an immediate moral hazard ... lawyers will conintually be trying to dip in and keep themselves busy earning a living off someone else's dime. The costs of the administration of such a fund would be huge and the true costs of litigation would be rendered opaque due to the complexity, actual costs will no longer even be clear.

I'm not sure what to offer as an alternative solution but I think we could come up with better/smarter solutions if we tried.

Re:Consequences

[JosKarith]

A simpler solution - shoot all the lawyers.

Re:Consequences

[Nyder]

I don't know WHY our legal system is so faulty, but it is. NO ONE (and ONE includes any business) should be subjected to costs because someone else just happens to disagree. If someone sues YOU and in order to defend yourself, you need to hire attorney(s) at a cost of tens of thousands of dollars (which for some people can wipe them out, financially), wouldn't you want the other party to cover your costs?

Actually, I would think it should be a cause for a mistrial since the rich person is using unfair tactics against you. For example, lets say I was to be taken to court by one of the AA's. There is no way I could get a fair trial because I do NOT have the money they do. They can keep throwing money at the trial, delaying it, appealing it, etc way beyond what I, or any normal person could do. That isn't right. That is using money to buy the outcome you want.

Re:C is for consumer

[Tough Love]

Yes. Buy Amazon. It's called "going long".

Re:So is 'App Store' safe to use now?

[Anonymous Coward]

So with this ruling does it mean its safe for the rest of us to use App Store or will we still have to worry about going up against Apple in court?

Situation unchanged. They still won't have a leg to stand on but they'll still be able to sure anyway and it'll still cost you a fortune.

Re:i is for idiot.

[rgbrenner]

You're thinking of Apple:
http://www.smh.com.au/digital-life/mp3s/apples-future-wont-be-brought-to-you-by-the-letter-i-20100312-q27r.html

Hey have you ever seen a "leaf"? Apple just trademarked it:
http://www.webpronews.com/apples-trademark-applications-are-getting-kind-of-ridiculous-2012-12

I would have never thought of that. Guess that's why Apple's #1

Re:C is for consumer

[wonkey_monkey]

Anyone with an apple device is complicit in these actions.

And anyone who uses ReiserFS is an accessory to murder!

Re:So is 'App Store' safe to use now?

[moronoxyd]

So with this ruling does it mean its safe for the rest of us to use App Store or will we still have to worry about going up against Apple in court?

Not yet.

So far only the claim that Amazon was doing false advertisment was thrown out of court.
The claim that Amazon infringes the trademark is still to be decided.

Let's face it ...

[thomst]

Under Steve Jobs, Apple always was litigious. Tim Cook is just continuing the same strategy - and, long-term, that's pretty much the problem Apple faces.

What I mean by that is that Jobs, whatever you might think of him as a person, was clearly a visionary. He envisioned products for needs that people didn't even know they had, until Apple produced them - and thereby created markets that hadn't previously existed. The problem Apple faces is that Cook is not Jobs. Not even, not by a long stretch. Jobs was a conceptual thinker and a design maven. Cook is a bean counter. His vision is strictly limited to cost control and supply-line dynamics.

So Apple now faces the same problem it had when its Board of Directors kicked Jobs to the curb in the late 1980's, and handed control of the company over to a series of bean-counting "business leaders", instead: a complete lack of product vision on the part of management led to technological stagnation and chronic laurel-resting on the part of the company. Sure, they retained their profit margins ... but their market share and total sales first stagnated, then started dwindling away. By the time the Board hired egomaniac Gilbert Amelio to run the company and HE hired Ellen Hancock (the woman who previously had single-handedly destroyed IBM's PC software division) as Apple's CTO, the best minds at Apple were diving overboard in lemming-like droves.

And it sure looks like that same cycle of stagnation and decline is facing the latter-day Apple Corp. Sure, the i-Stuff is selling really well now - but there are NO new breakthrough products on Apple's horizon, and my bet is that there aren't going to be. Steve Jobs was pretty much the avatar of the modern Key Man Problem, and, in order to replace him, Apple's Board first would have to FIND the next Jobs, and then would have to push Tim Cook aside and entrust the company to Jobs II. My bet is that that just ain't gonna happen. Ever.

So Apple's riding high on a mountain of cash right now, and the i-Stuff is deluging its coffers with more money every quarter - but the end of that ride is in sight, and it won't be much more than a decade before litigation is ALL the company has left - because Steve Jobs, the technological Elvis, has left the buidling for good.

Re:i is for idiot.

[Plumpaquatsch]

You're thinking of Apple:

No, he *sn't

Re:C is for consumer

[Plumpaquatsch]

People like those "Occupy Wall Street" hipsters preaching about the market are like the pope preaching about sex. You must try to learn about things before you can have an opinion on them.

Uhh. Considering the boneheaded mistakes "Wall Street" has made in the last decade, maybe its them who should finally learn their trade.

Remember it wasn't the "Occupy Wall Street" hipsters that caused the global economy to collapse.

But then, maybe everything went as planned, and at least some of the Wall Street people successfully played "the market" with this.

Re:C is for consumer

[gmack]

Apple has some good products but you have gone much too far drinking the coolade. Apple did nothing to contribute to the invention those displays they simply bought the highest res LCD panels and added them to their systems.

The "fusion" drives are standard hybrid drives that use flash as the cache for the spinning media. Support is not baked into OS X and everything they described in the link you listed are functions provided by the drive firmware. The fact that they make it seem like OS X is doing anything for this at all is just laughable since I could throw the drive into a windows 2000 system and still have everything in that paragraph still apply.

I guess they finally realized their earbuds were terrible but the replacement doesn't look like it would be anywhere near as good as my Sennheiser ear canal set.

So you want to double++ the number of law suits?

[csumpi]

Let's start with the assumption that when a corporation files a law suit they have about 50% chance of winning. So with your "litigation finance pool" they would have half of their litigation costs for free. This would mean that they could file 2x as many law suits for the same amount of money.

Now let's add to this the fact that most things can be argued either way, so whoever has the better argument, as in whoever can afford the better attorney, wins more often. That would make litigation even more affordable for companies with lots of $$ to burn.

You sure you thought this one through?

"Frivolous lawsuits need to result in jail time."

We already have something even better for this in the US. The burden is on the lawyers, and they can be penalized big time for not doing their due diligence. From wikipedia:

In the United States, Rule 11 of the Federal Rules of Civil Procedure and similar state rules require that an attorney perform a due diligence investigation concerning the factual basis for any claim or defense. Jurisdictions differ on whether a claim or defense can be frivolous if the attorney acted in good faith. Because such a defense or claim wastes the court's and the other parties' time, resources and legal fees, sanctions may be imposed by a court upon the party or the lawyer who presents the frivolous defense or claim. The law firm may also be sanctioned, or even held in contempt.

doesn't work

[terec]

Germany has this system ("loser pays"). It means that the risk when getting sued is even higher than in the US, because if you defend yourself against an accusation and fail, you have to cover the opponent's costs and court costs (up to some statutory limits) as well. The statutory fees themselves become a means of blackmailing people legally. There is a "pool" to cover this: legal insurance. Both businesses and private individuals have it, but it's expensive, and it may still not cover the costs. In different words: your ideas have been tried and they just don't work.

Not Scratching My Head At All

[whisper_jeff]

I'm an Apple fanboy and I wasn't left scratching my head at all. And anyone with even a basic understanding of trademark law wouldn't be either. Apple has a registered trademark for "App Store" ( http://tess2.uspto.gov/bin/showfield?f=doc&state=4010:2zpo7n.2.5 ). If they failed to defend that trademark in court, they are assumed to accept unauthorized usage of the trademark. Even if defending it is a longshot (which this was), they must defend it or they lose it.

There are many examples from about 20 or 30 years ago but they are rare now because most legal departments have learned that if you want to keep your trademark protected, you are required to defend it.

This is different from copyrights and patents. Trademarks must be defended or they become harder and harder to defend.

So, no, I wasn't left scratching my head. I thought this lawsuit was a longshot but they were required to file it to defend their "App Store" trademark.