Apple Denies Amazon’s Claim That ‘App Store’ Is Generic Term | Hacker News Reader

Apple Denies Amazon’s Claim That ‘App Store’ Is Generic Term

businessweek.com

39 pointsGarbage39 comments

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.

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.

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.

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.

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).

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

The "Drug Store" part cracked me up. Thank you.

I think we have to distinguish between a term being ubiquitous and generic. I know it's fairly common for someone in the US to refer to a tissue as a Kleenex but that doesn't mean other tissue brands can market their goods under that same title.

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).

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

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

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.

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.

Therefore, "app store" shouldn't be trademarked, because there isn't 'an alternative that sounds equally or more generic'.

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.

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.

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

Popularizing a term does not automatically mean you can trademark it. Purely descriptive language like "app store" generally cannot be trademarked unless it has "acquired distinctiveness" through use in trade.

Apple has to show that people think "app store" means Apple's app store. How many people have to think that, and how technically inclined those people have to be, I don't know. The reaction to this story shows at least that the tech community does not think that. I don't know how trademark law deals with large rifts in public perception.

Further reading: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Trademark_distinctiveness

How about "Apstor" ? I bet nobody trademarked it yet.

Application store!

Please..."Windows" was trademarked and that is a much more generic term than "App Store". Reality plays no part in this.

You're confused here. Trademarks dont' apply globally like patents or copyrights, they only apply within contexts where there is likely to be consumer confusion.

Microsoft can have "Windows" brand operating systems. I could create a chain of "Windows" restaurants. A company that sells windows absolutely could not create a "Windows" trademark and expect it to have any legal force.

It wasn't trademarked by a company that sells windows.

It was trademarked by a company that sells lls a windowing owing system.

App store is trying to be trademarked by a company that has an App Store?

Pardon the obvious software error, but could people please not downmod a well known fact? Microsift sells a windowing system.

Maybe it's not so much the term app store but the term app that Apple kind of "registered". Of course, app is just an abbreviation for application, but this term is currently used almost exclusively for applications on Apple platforms.

I dunno, "web app" has been common lingo for over a decade. You just don't hear it much anymore because it's lost its buzzword status.

Interestingly, the first Google hit for "web app" is some sort of Apple store. A preemptive strike?

Actually, I doubt most people know what a "web app" is. Have you ever tried to explain the difference between a Web Site and a Web App to someone non-technical?

Apps, on the other hand, are definitely understood to be mobile applications. Can't say whether it's tied specifically to Apple or not though.

That's not to say I agree with App Store being trademarked - it's pretty ridiculous, IMO.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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

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

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

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.

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