“Apple modified its lawsuit against Amazon this week, accusing the giant e-tailer of infringing its ‘App Store’ trademark in new advertising for the Kindle Fire tablet,” Gregg Keizer reports for Computerworld.
“‘Amazon began altering its use of the infringing mark by omitting or de-emphasizing the use of the ‘for Android’ suffix to the ‘Amazon Appstore’ phrase,’ Apple charged in the amended complaint filed Wednesday in a California federal court,” Keizer reports.
“Apple submitted a trademark application for ‘App Store’ with the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office in 2008,” Keizer reports. “That application is pending, awaiting resolution of opposition from Microsoft. Apple tied Amazon’s change to “Amazon Appstore” to the launch of the Kindle Fire, the 7-in. tablet that went on sale this week.”
Read more in the full article here.
[Thanks to MacDailyNews Reader “Lynn Weiler” for the heads up.]
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I’m glad Apple is not going to idly sit by why all these clown continue to copy their hard work!
… involved in the name app store”? Or in the vast majority of the apps sold there – at least on Apple’s part? In this case, the question isn’t about “hard work” so much as “trade dress”. Amazon is looking to confuse the customer into believing what they are getting will be able to access Apple‘s app store for the price of Amazon‘s cut-rate tablet. Apple owns that name and has the right – and the legal need – to protect its usage.
The hard work was making the “App Store” name something worth protecting in the first place. The same goes for the trade dress of iPhone and iPad and every other industrial design and trademark. If Apple hadn’t put in the hard work, the Amazons, the Googles, the HTCs, and the Samsungs of the world would not be trying to profit off Apple’s hard work by attempting to fool the vast majority of consumers.
I hadn’t thought this suit very significant but I just saw a Fire review on App Judgement (a Rev 3 video podcast) where they kept saying “App Store” but were referring to *Amazon’s* app store. It started confusing me after a while as they were comparing to iPad and it was hard to tell which store they were talking about. I realized then that for the average person, hearing about “apps” and “app stores” and not knowing the difference, Amazon really gains a lot off Apple’s positive reputation by making their store name so similar. Apple needs to win this. There’s no reason Amazon can’t name their store something else that’s less confusing!
Courts just need to look at history. Apple calls their software “applications”. ap for short. The others call their software “programs”. If anything it should be called Pro store
’s gonna squander all their reserve billions on lawyers…kinda like the government.