∞ Apple, Microsoft hire linguists to battle ‘App Store’ trademark

The battle over Apple’s App Store trademark application is getting down to the nitty gritty as the two companies hire linguists to help them in the fight.

[ad#Google Adsense 300x250 in story]Apple hired Robert Leonard who said the “App Store” term “was a proper noun and deserved to be trademarked, even though the words are generic when separated,” according to WSJ. As you might expect Microsoft’s linguist didn’t agree.

“The compound noun app store means simply ‘store at which apps are offered for sale,’ which is merely a definition of the thing itself — a generic characterization,” said Microsoft’s linguist, Ronald Butters.

In its filing, Apple used Microsoft’s Windows trademark against them.

“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,” says Apple in the filing. “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.”

http://twitter.com/WooDzMuzik Anthony Woodruffe

So instead of trying to gain free use of the name ‘App Store’ why are marketing departments not finding new trademarks. Like ‘App Shop’, ‘AppMart’ or even ‘WinApp’? Oh darn it… now I’ll have to register them myself and sell them to Microsoft, Google and RIM… pfff

Anonymous

Because Apple just spent 3 years and millions of dollars making “App Store” famous, so much so that “app” was added to many dictionaries in 2010. Microsoft and Amazon want to trick consumers into thinking their remote application installers are the one famous one everybody has heard of, not just some copycat me-too BS versions with a handful of baby apps.