Apple filed a trademark application for the term ‘App Store’ back in 2008, in January of this year Microsoft challenged the application saying that the term was too generic.
Now it looks like Apple is fighting back, in an attempt to secure the ‘App Store’ trademark, and according to MSNBC Apple has now filed a legal challenge against Microsoft.
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. 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.
To be honest when you think about it, did anyone actually use the term ‘App Store’ before Apple launched their app store, and it has only become a popular term because of the popularity of the Apple App store, so we suspect in the end Apple will end up being granted the trademark.
via Mobile Burn
