Although many heralded the arrival of Amazon.com Inc.’s Android Appstore as a boost to the Android ecosystem, and a victory for consumer choice, Apple Inc. congratulated Amazon.com in a rather different way – they sued them.
Apple holds the trademark to “app store,” which is used both in iOS and OS X. A few months ago Microsoft Corp. challenged the viability of the trademark, saying it was “too generic,” and now Amazon.com have levelled the same accusation at Jobs and Co. after being slapped with litigation. Obviously truncating the term to “Appstore” wasn’t enough to pass by Cupertino’s eagle-eyed legal team.
The logic goes that, although Apple popularised them, “apps” have been around since the iPhone was just a twinkle in Jony Ive’s eye, and as such trademarking the term “app store” is akin to trying to trademark “grocery store.” In attempting to pry the trademark from Apple’s brushed aluminium claws, both Microsoft and Apple have quote Steve Jobs himself, speaking on a quarterly earning call where he speaks of “app stores” in a generic sense:
“So there will be at least four app stores on Android, which customers must search among to find the app they want and developers will need to work with to distribute their apps and get paid. This is going to be a mess for both users and developers. Contrast this with Apple’s integrated App Store, which offers users the easiest-to-use largest app store in the world, preloaded on every iPhone.”
Indeed, Apple was denied the trademark when they first applied, however were eventually granted ownership of the term once the iPhone and their App Store had gained some ubiquity. However, with every man and his dog getting in on the app store game – and Amazon.com’s legal response now well under way – it remains to be seen how long they can keep hold of it.
