
Microsoft challenges Apple's App Store trademark - taylorbuley
http://www.electronista.com/articles/11/01/12/microsoft.says.app.store.trademark.too.generic/
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geuis
This is one instance where I legitimately think Apple's trademark on the term
"App Store" is wholly ok.

I did two searches on the term "App Store" using Google Trends and Google
Ngram Viewer.

Trends:
[http://www.google.com/trends?q=App+Store&ctab=0&geo=...](http://www.google.com/trends?q=App+Store&ctab=0&geo=all&date=all&sort=0)

Ngram:
[http://ngrams.googlelabs.com/graph?content=app+store&yea...](http://ngrams.googlelabs.com/graph?content=app+store&year_start=1800&year_end=2008&corpus=0&smoothing=3)

Trends shows data starting from 2004. Regardless of capitalization, i.e. "app
store" or "App Store", it wasn't until 2008 when the term "App Store" started
entering common parlance. This coincides with Apple's introduction of its "App
Store".

Ngram data shows no usage of "App Store" or "app store" from the time of 1800
to 2008. I was suspicious of this, but using the terms "app,store" separately
produced lots of data points. My tentative hypothesis is that Ngram is using
data that existed before the App Store went public and thus will not show up
in Ngram.

These are only two sets of data, but at least initially it seems that Apple
has a legitimate claim to a trademark on App Store.

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rafski
Fun facts:

At the time of the AppStore announcement by Steve Jobs, the word trademark
APPSTORE and the domain APPSTORE.COM belonged to Salesforce.com

Salesforce.com dropped their APPSTORE trademark in 2008, just about the time
Apple applied for APP STORE trademark. The domain APPSTORE.COM now leads to an
error page within apple.com domain.

I guess we can safely assume Apple got the trademark green light and the
domain from Salesforce.com, especially after—if my memory
serves—Salesforce.com app was featured in one of the Steve Jobs stage
announcements.

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cobralibre
This is especially delicious, coming from a company whose trademarks include
"Word", "Office", "Access", "Publisher", and "Outlook".

[http://www.microsoft.com/about/legal/en/us/IntellectualPrope...](http://www.microsoft.com/about/legal/en/us/IntellectualProperty/Trademarks/Usage/Office.aspx)

~~~
tomlin
So, Apple AND Microsoft are both wrong.

Trademarking a name like "Food Store" for a grocery store would be ridiculous.
Just as "App Store" is equally ridiculous.

~~~
allwein
Um, I don't find "Food Store" to be a ridiculous trademark at all.

Have you heard of The Container Store? They'd definitely argue that their
trademark isn't ridiculous. And in my city, there's a burger restaurant called
Burger and a drinking establishment known as Bar.

~~~
thomasz
You can call your food store "Food Store", your bar "Bar" and your burger
restaurant "Burger", but you can't claim exclusivity.

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bokchoi
I think this is a good thing. "App Store" is too generic a term to trademark
IMHO.

