

Apple Denies Amazon’s Claim That ‘App Store’ Is Generic Term - Garbage
http://www.businessweek.com/news/2011-05-20/apple-denies-amazon-s-claim-that-app-store-is-generic-term.html

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Osiris
I wonder how Apple will counter the statement that Jobs made about the
multiple app stores on Android. It seeks as he already used it as a generic
term.

~~~
SoftwareMaven
Same way I'd respond if I was the CEO of Johnson and Johnson and used BandAid
when I should have said self-adhesive bandage (or plaster[1]): We own the mark
and use the mark so frequently to describe our product that it was a
reasonable slip when discussing entities that certainly are similar to the
thing our mark describes.

[1] Completely unrelated: My first trip to England, I had to buy some Doc
Martins from THE Doc Martin store (bucket list kind of thing :). So I'm
walking around a lot in them as I schlep around the Midlands and Yorkshire for
various meetings and some site seeing, and I've managed to generate some very
uncomfortable blisters. I need a BandAid...err...self-adhesive bandage.

It's off to the hotel desk in Leeds, "Do you have any BandAids?"

"Any what?"

"BandAids", I'm now catching on that maybe J&J isn't big here as I see his
confused look. I decide to go generic, "Self-adhesive bandages?"

The confused look remains. At some point he gets a really pathetic first aid
kit without any BandAids in it. I'm now wondering if the UK's medical system
was to blame for a country not having self-adhesive bandages. I quickly drop
the probability on that to very low, but don't fully eliminate it.

I decide it's time to leave the hotel and go where I'm sure I'll find one.
"Can you tell me where a drug store is nearby?"

Doh. I eventually get pointed to the Chemist.

I get there and finally find my BandAids: Plasters? Really? I guess it goes
with bendy-busses and the like.

Now one more thing. The feet are hurting and some Tylenol would help. Of
course there is no Tylenol. I start reading the ingredients, I know
acetaminophen must be in one of these.

And, of course not. Why didn't I know it was called paracetamol?

Needless to say, my US centric view of the world was shattered over the course
of those 45 minutes.

...and by the time I finished this story, nobody would care that I used
BandAid once to describe a self-adhesive bandage.

~~~
X-Istence
Paracetamol is the generic drug name all over the world, only the US, Canada,
Japan, South-Korea, and Hong Kong uses acetaminophen. Although in Canada they
know what paracetamol is at least!

So as a Dutch person I was at a pharmacy asking for paracetamol and off course
the person behind the counter has absolutely no idea what I am talking about.

And directed me to Aleve (naproxen sodium) and Advil (Ibuprofen) and Bayers
(Asparin) all of which are NSAID's which can't be taken with certain drugs,
and for some reason they are not nearly as effective.

It bothered me to no end that the pharmacist had never heard of paracetamol,
especially since you have to consider that as a pharmacist you will come in
contact with people from all sorts of nationalities.

~~~
Locke1689
_It bothered me to no end that the pharmacist had never heard of paracetamol,
especially since you have to consider that as a pharmacist you will come in
contact with people from all sorts of nationalities._

Maybe, maybe not. Not sure why you assume that. The US is a big place. Also,
I'm sure the pharmacist would have known the proper chemical name: para-
acetylaminophenol.

 _And directed me to Aleve (naproxen sodium) and Advil (Ibuprofen) and Bayers
(Asparin) all of which are NSAID's which can't be taken with certain drugs,
and for some reason they are not nearly as effective._

None of this is strictly correct. There are many cases in which other NSAIDs
are more effective. It's true that other NSAIDs have some poor drug
interactions, but acetaminophen does as well (alcohol being the most notable
and important).

~~~
X-Istence
Sorry, I should have specified, paracetamol is the only effective pain killer
I have found. The others don't have nearly the same effect.

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emitstop
I could understand if it was "AppStore" in one word or something to that
effect. "App Store" on the other hand is definitely a generic term.

"Application" has been shortened to app for a long time and it is very
generic. And I'm not sure how much more generic you could possibly make the
word "store".

Even the " _noun_ store" combination is extremely common and basic, (e.g.
computer store, grocery store).

~~~
Steko
The noun windows is also fairly generic. The noun apple is also fairly
generic. And yet there are trademarks for these.

~~~
Typhon
Actually, there are several trademarks for "apple", and it resulted in several
lawsuits.

~~~
Steko
Actually I knew that but the point here is whether generic things can be
trademarked, trademarking them multiple times in different areas which then
converge is not all that relevant.

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extension
So, if you have a _store_ that sells _apps_ , what does Apple expect you to
call it? Software Shop? Algorithm Emporium?

If "app store" can be trademarked, surely there must be an alternative that
sounds equally or more generic.

~~~
flyosity
The phrase App Store was not in use before Apple's App Store was created. Take
a look at Google Trends from the past few years. Nobody talked about it until
Apple used the term, now, it's used like people saying Kleenex when they could
have just said tissue.

Apple wasn't the first to have a centralized location where users could
download software. If they called it the Apple Software Center I bet everyone
would be calling their software centers Software Centers and we'd be having
the same argument.

~~~
watty
I think if the word "app" is proven to be generic with prior use, "app store"
shouldn't be able to be trademarked. "Kleenex" is a unique word with no
meaning prior to Kleenex, not so of an "app store", completely different case.

~~~
Symmetry
Whats worse for Apple, "Kleenex" was so dominant at one point that it came
close to being Genericized [1]. If the public doesn't think of a word as
referring to a specific product but instead they think of "Kleenex" as a name
for all soft facial tissues then in the US at least the "Kleenex" trade mark
can lose its legal force.

It might be that Apple invented the term "App Store", but as long as members
of the public would tend to refer to application repositories from Google or
Amazon by the same term, even without Google or Amazon using it, then "App
Store" isn't serving a useful purpose as a trademark and doesn't have the same
legal force as a word that was in practice only specific to Apple.

I, personally, love the fact that the law around trademarks corresponds so
well to their purpose - preventing consumers from being confused. This is one
of the reasons I don't like the term "intellectual property", it takes three
things that are very different legally and lumps them together in a way that
sometimes causes people to think that the rules governing one apply to others,
or that the attitudes they have towards one form should apply to all of them.
Personally I'm pretty ambivalent about whether we ought to have patents and
copyrights at all - but I think that trademarks are awesome and we'd be much
worse off without them.

EDIT: Oops, forgot to put in the reference: [1]
<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Genericized_trademark>

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7952
Apple actually benefits from using a generic term. They could have just sold
the apps within the itunes app but which may have caused confusion. Do they
then have the right to trade mark "calculator" or "calender"? They could have
called the calculator isums but that would have caused confusion.

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anthonycerra
I remember the days when "apps" and "progs" were little programs you found on
Astalivista to open your friend's CD-Rom drive through AOL instant messenger.
Would that fly as an argument for Amazon in a court of law? Probably not, but
it's fun to reminisce about.

~~~
Skywing
Correct me if I'm wrong, but doesn't that kind of backup Amazon's claims of
the term "app" being generic - whether you think those old apps were worthy of
the current term or not? I've used the term app for as long as I can remember.
Apple certainly did not coin it. Now, if it was for "App Store", as a term,
then I could see that.

~~~
swernli
Yes, it would help show that the term "app" is generic, but that isn't really
Amazon's claim. It's a bit more subtle than that. They are claiming that "app
store" is a generic term for a store that sells downloadable applications.
Apple isn't denying that either "app" or "store" are generic, but rather that
the combination into "app store" has specific meaning when applied to the
realm of applications that provide a digital storefront to sell additional
applications. They might even have a case here, as these kinds of trademark
things usually come down to whether or not the public associates the term with
a specific source. Basically, it would be considered unfair for Amazon to use
the term "app store" if it has a connection to Apple in the public mind,
because that would mean that Amazon is technically trading on Apple's
reputation. That's what the law would seek to protect, and that might be how
Apple could win this case.

~~~
Blarat
What I really don't understand is how Apple can do this due to the face that
Amazon won't (and can't) sell any "Apple app store apps" on their store, so
they won't be a competitor. For me it's if a company that produces patches to
repair bicycle tubes called their product for "band aid", same idea but
different markets.

~~~
Locke1689
That's not really a fair analogy because, while the Amazon marketplace may not
sell iOS Apps, presumably they sell things which compete in the same market
(i.e., solve the same problem). The Band-Aid competitors don't literally sell
Band-Aids, but they do sell self-adhesive bandages that compete directly with
the market for Band-Aids.

~~~
Symmetry
Are they actually competitors? Band-Aid sells bandages for people and other
people have band-aids for bicycle tires. Apple has an App Store for iOS
devices, while Google and Amazon have app stores for Android devices... I'm
not saying its obviously one way or the others, but it doesn't seem clear cut
to me.

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dvfer
Of course they deny it... when does big companies ever agree with anything?

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tjogin
I dont remember people talking of "app stores" before the App Store.

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rezahazri
i think this is because someone owns the www.appstore.com

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stcredzero
It's misty-eyed woo-woo, but it's still fun to think of this as bad karma from
"One-Click" coming home to roost.

