Apple and Amazon End Lawsuit Over the Term 'App Store'

An anonymous reader writes "After months of back and forth legal filings, Amazon and Apple have finally ended their ongoing dispute centering on Amazon's use of the term 'App Store.' As part of the agreement, Apple agreed to drop the suit and Amazon promised not to counter-sue Apple in the future. Apple spokeswoman Kristin Huguet said that 'we no longer see a need to pursue our case. With more than 900,000 apps and 50 billion downloads, customers know where they can purchase their favorite apps.' Apple initially sued Amazon back in March of 2011 alleging that the online retailer's use of the phrase 'App Store' in its mobile software developer program constituted trademark infringement. Apple expressed that allowing Amazon to continue to use the phrase 'App Store' would ultimately confuse consumers who associate the phrase with Apple's app store for iOS apps."

Comments

Sure that's the reason

[RazzleFrog]

I am sure that is the reason they dropped it and not because they were throwing dollars at lawyers for a case they couldn't possibly win. They found a way to back out gracefully.

Re:Sure that's the reason

[loufoque]

They never wanted to win, just delay.

Re:Sure that's the reason

[icebike]

I am sure that is the reason they dropped it and not because they were throwing dollars at lawyers for a case they couldn't possibly win. They found a way to back out gracefully.

Or could it be that over the intervening time, Apple figured out that their customers are not as stupid as Apple thought they were, and none of them were found trying to download Amazon apps to their walled-garden phones?

Apple expressed that allowing Amazon to continue to use the phrase 'App Store' would ultimately confuse consumers

Re:Sure that's the reason

[Scarletdown]

Apple are fucking stupid. They go around suing every other large company around alienating themselves and making a lot of enemies when they could be forming valuable partnerships instead.

That makes far too much sense. And to top it off, where such a philosophy would have been normal in the early days of the personal computer industry, cooperation between businesses to where everyone can succeed does not align with the modern douchebag corporate philosophy, where it is not enough for a company to be a success, but all competitors must ultimately fail. And if that is not possible, scorch the land.

Re:Sure that's the reason

[tlhIngan]

That makes far too much sense. And to top it off, where such a philosophy would have been normal in the early days of the personal computer industry, cooperation between businesses to where everyone can succeed does not align with the modern douchebag corporate philosophy, where it is not enough for a company to be a success, but all competitors must ultimately fail. And if that is not possible, scorch the land.

But how much cooperation is "too much"?

Would the eBook publishers "cooperating" to make eBooks more successful be considered "too much"? The DoJ thought so.

Would Apple, Microsoft, Google all banding together make for a better place? Or perhaps if Apple "gave up" on OS X, and joined Microsoft to help make Windows better? You know, after all, it had like 98% marketshare at that point over a decade and a half ago.

A form of cooperation is collusion, and trust me, even in the early PC industry, competition was king. Sure a lot of people helped each other, but a lot of others competed. The early days of the Homebrew Computer Club were all about bragging rights, a form of competition.

Perhaps Apple and Google should've cooperated and they could fold Android into iOS, and leave us with one true smartphone OS.

When businesses start acting nice to each other, it's time to worry.

And once again, the winners are ....

[whoever57]

the lawyers!

patents

[irving47]

I bet a shiny quarter that somewhere in the agreement, Apple gets a break on the 1-click purchase license that Amazon got the patent on way back when. Apple was among the first, if not the first, to license that farce for their store online.

Of course

[dabadab]

Yes, I can totally see, how a misguided Apple user would download stuff from Amazon to his iPhone instead of using Apple's app store - well, except for the minor problem
, that their phones do not allow them to do it.

Re:Good...

[amRadioHed]

I think you're confused. The app store is where you go to get apps for your phone. A crap store on the other hand is where you can purchase things like that joke.

Re:Good...

[Known Nutter]

Your joke is bad, and you should feel bad.

Re:They should just...

[oodaloop]

Presumably, then, the artist formerly known as Prince would be unaffected in this scenario.

Re:Hang on...

[AequitasVeritas]

The above referenced wikipedia article indicates that as of May 2013, the Play Store had somewhere in the realm of 48 billion downloads (up from 40 billion in April 2013). It would be relatively safe to assume that if the number of downloads went up by 8 billion in one month, that exceeding 50 billion by today's date (over a month later) would not be far fetched.

Genericism

[bmo]

"App" is a generic self-descriptive term meaning application going back to the 70s. "Store" is a generic term going back centuries. The two together are also generic and self-descriptive.

You can't have a self-descriptive genericism as a trademark and get away with it if someone has the balls to try to take it away from you.

Microsoft almost lost their trademark to Windows because of this (and handed a pile of money to Linspire to shut up about it).

--
BMO

Re:Genericism

[Your.Master]

Windows isn't really a generic self-descriptive term for an operating system, so I don't think a Windows trademark dispute has any bearing on this issue.

I don't know about the 70s but I do know killer app was a term whose peak popularity predated the iPhone.

Re:Genericism

[Pfhorrest]

At the time in question, Windows was not an operating system. It was a windowing system that ran on their operating system, which contrary to popular usage was not just called "DOS" because that's also a generic descriptor of any disk operating system -- it was specifically MS-DOS, like Apple's app stores are specifically the iOS App Store and the Mac App Store.

So Windows was software which gave your computer windows, in the same way that The App Store (whichever one) is a store where you buy apps. Both equally generic in their respective timeframes.

It's so much clearer now

[Krishnoid]

With more than 900,000 apps and 50 billion downloads, customers know where they can purchase their favorite apps.

Amazon?

Is "App store" usage free now?

[manu0601]

Does that nullify the "App store" trade mark? Is any random project allowed to use it now?