“Microsoft is asking the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office to deny Apple a trademark on the name ‘App Store,’ saying the term is generic and competitors should be able to use it,” Stephen Lawson reports for IDG News.
“Apple applied for the trademark in 2008 for goods and services including ‘retail store services featuring computer software provided via the internet and other computer and electronic communication networks’ and other related offerings,” Lawson reports. “Apple launched its App Store for the iPhone that year along with its iPhone 3G. The store is now available on any device that runs the company’s iOS software, namely the iPod Touch and iPad, and Apple introduced its Mac App Store earlier this month.”
Lawson reports, “On Tuesday, Microsoft filed a motion for summary judgment with the agency’s Trademark Trial and Appeal Board, asking it to deny the trademark to Apple… Microsoft also said consumers and the trade and general media use “app store” generically to mean online stores where applications are sold.”
MacDailyNews Take: They also use “iPod” to refer to just about any portable media player. “iPod” is a registered trademark of Apple Inc. Next argument.
Lawson reports, “Apple’s online store represented a new idea for mobile software shopping when it was launched and quickly became a big success, emulated by many other handset makers and some mobile operators.”
Full article here.
MacDailyNews Take: Microsoft. Fixated on a rivet while being run over by a freight train’s caboose.
@ Ballmer’s Left Nut
“No worries about the App Store trademark being occupied by Apple. Microsoft will just call its Windows Phone 7 store the AppLack Store.”
Yeah, and they could “borrow” that CGI’d goose from AFLAC and have it say, “AppLack”. Hah!
If Microsoft tries to trademark “Dedicated to developing creative, original, innovations in technology to make your computing life easier™”, I’m suing.
I’m joking, MS
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Maybe they could shorten
Program Application store to:
“Pap store”. Pap meaning:
1. Soft or semiliquid food, as for infants.
2. Material lacking real value or substance: TV shows that offer nothing but pap.
3. Slang Money and favors obtained as political patronage
be about on the money with either of these meanings…
Apple files for a trademark in 2008 … now that it is 2011 and Apple is being successful, Microsoft finally submits a protest?
IMO, MS is 2+ years too late in complaining, which kills their credibility and basis.
So too does this webpage:
<http://www.microsoft.com/about/legal/en/us/IntellectualProperty/Trademarks/Usage/Windows.aspx>
-hh
Now if Apple just called it the AAPL store . . .
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MS is correct here. App is a generic term, an abbreviation of a real word. I’m getting fed up of reading about patents and trademarks that should simply NOT be allowed, and this is one of them. This is a fact not an opinion.
Ballmer can say and do as he wants but we all know that Microsoft is quickly becoming an ‘Irrelevancy’.
A Slap Store is full of MS-quality software products that were conceived by the brainwaves inside Ballmer T Clown’s head.
@ivid: App is not a generic term. App is a neologism COINED BY APPLE to represent in general applications made for its handheld devices.
And windows is not generic???
Apple is slowly becoming the next Nazi Empire of the technology world. With Apple PR (Gestapo) and the Apple Legal Dept. (SS), nothing can stop them.
All hail your new Fuhrer: Steve Jobs
HEIL JOBS!!! HEIL JOBS!!! HEIL JOBS!!!
<Sniff>…..makes me so proud.
Nope. The next Nazi Empire of the technology world is unmistakably Google, or at least they will be once Microsoft finishes dying in a few years.
Speaking of Microsoft, they’ve got no case here. The phrase “app store” didn’t even exist until Apple coined it specifically to refer to the… Umm… App Store. It’s unique in and of itself, and even if people might use it generically, that hardly invalidates the trademark. See Xerox and Kleenex for example, those bastard Nazi Empires of the printing and tissue worlds.
Microsoft, the maker of that OS with the trademarked name of “Windows”, is complaining?
Well, aren’t applications on Windows actually called programs? Isn’t there a My Programs or Program Files Folder in Windows? Why don’t the just open a Pro Store? Because no one would know what it was that’s why. Sucks to ride coattails doesn’t it Microsoft?
MS is going to lose this one.
I switched to Mac 2-3 years ago.
MS crapware has always been called programs or simply software. it has never been referred to as an app.
just opening up a drawer here… old Win98 manual. hmm… Ch3, page 43. “Working with PROGRAMS”
opening up my win7 upgrade disk, open the little booklet. right under the serial number example… it tells me i should turn off my antivirus PROGRAM (funny how they assume that you have one…)
I’m sure i could dig up my manual for my G4 mac mini, or my G5 dual powerMac here and find Applications.
Screw it… Ch2 page 22.
http://manuals.info.apple.com/en/Power_Mac_G5_Late_2005.pdf
and dont start the “its application programs” argument…
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Application_software
its application software, the term application program is a combination of terms from well… idiots.
MS has their “Marketplace” which is wrongly named… but its MS.
they are just Grasping for a bone. and they wont get it. If they do win…. Apple will just destroy MS with all the patent infringements. Tie MS up in Court for years. while Apple moves on, and MS has to go back to the Copy/Paste room.
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