Apple Files for App Store Trademark, Microsoft Hates That with Every Fiber of Its Being

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As expected Apple has filed for the “App Store” trademark, a concept Cupertino brought to the modern smartphone business. The iTunes App Store is the biggest app repository in the world, and it served as the model for all current app stores from the competition.

Google has the Android Market, Microsoft has the Windows Marketplace, and, basically, everyone else has an app store that’s meant to offer consumers applications for a certain mobile OS environment. Naturally everyone is trying to compete against Apple and Google as the two are the worldwide leaders when it comes to smartphone platforms.

Microsoft has had a lot to suffer in this new mobile environment considering the fact that it basically had to scrap Windows Mobile 6.1 and Windows Mobile 6.5 in order to be able to compete against iOS and Android with a brand new Windows Phone 7. And that means its app store had to suffer as it only packs over 5,000 titles to date.

On top of that Microsoft is now unhappy with the fact that Apple is choosing such a generic term to trademark. The App Store, while the actual name of Apple’s iOS application store, does happen to be also a general term that could be applied to any other app store out there. Just remove the capital letters and you’ll end up with a regular app store, and that’s what Ballmer seems to be saying.

Apple applied for the “App Store” trademark in 2008 and it’s still waiting for a ruling on that. But Microsoft filed a summary judgment with the Trademark Trial and Appeal Board just yesterday to try to stop Apple from ever getting that specific trademark.

We’ll definitely keep an eye on this particular legal battle and we can’t help to wonder whether other players in the smartphone business are going to support Microsoft in this endeavor or not.

What do you think smartphone fans? Should Apple be granted the App Store trademark?