Apple Defends "App Store" Trademark

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Apple has applied to trademark its “App Store” name, but other companies are up in arms, saying it’s too generic. Microsoft, for one, has tried to block Apple’s efforts, but Apple is fighting back.

Apple filed for the trademark in 2008, and during that time, app stores probably weren’t very much in fashion. Now that Microsoft, Google and just about everybody else is running an application store of their own, Microsoft doesn’t want Apple to own the “App Store” trademark.

Apple has lashed back at Microsoft, though, for what is apparently hypocrisy on Microsoft’s part. Apple says “Windows” is a generic term, and yet Microsoft owns the trademark for the brand. Apple writes to the USPTO:

Having itself faced a decades-long genericness challenge to its claimed WINDOWS mark, Microsoft should be well aware that the focus in evaluating genericness is on the mark as a whole and requires a fact-intensive assessment of the primary significance of the term to a substantial majority of the relevant public.

Yet, Microsoft, missing the forest for the trees, does not base its motion on a comprehensive evaluation of how the relevant public understands the term APP STORE as a whole.

What it offers instead are out-of-context and misleading snippets of material printed by its outside counsel from the internet and allegations regarding how the public allegedly interprets the constituent parts of the term APP STORE, i.e., “app” and “store.”

Apple says “App” is a derivative of “Apple” and is using this as justification that they have a right to trademark “App Store.” Perhaps this is why Apple is so protective of the App Store name.

Is it fair for Apple to trademark the App Store name? Is it fair for Microsoft to own the Windows trademark, and yet try to block Apple from owning App Store?

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