A bid by Apple to stop Amazon.com from calling its online shop for mobile applications an “App Store” has been denied by a federal judge on Wednesday. Phyllis Hamilton, a US District Court Judge, did not accept Apple’s argument which made the phrase “App Store” tantamount to a trademark, which the company has applied for. She ruled that Apple had not proved that the “App Store” mark that it uses is famous along with being prominent and renowned.
Hamilton wrote in her ruling that there was evidence of Apple having spent a lot of money on publicity and advertising, along with having sold and provided a large number of apps from the store to its users. However, she also said that evidence suggested the term “App Store” was used by other vendors as well for describing a place where software applications for mobile devices are provided.
Apple had also argued that the term “Amazon Appstore for Android” may lead to confusion among the users; however the judge dismissed that argument saying that the phrase “App Store” is more descriptive than it is distinctive. Judge Hamilton has thus in effect denied Apple’s request for a preliminary injunction which will have stopped Amazon from calling its software shop an “Appstore”, for the period before the decision in the suit that Apple has filed for the matter comes out. Amazon had started offering applications for the devices which ran on Google’s Android platform in March.
The Seattle, Washington based Amazon offers Android users free and paid programs for their smartphones and tablets at its “Appstore”. Apple, which sells its own mobile and tablet applications through a shop called the “App Store”, had filed a lawsuit against Amazon in March in attempts of blocking it from using a similar name, accusing the company of unauthorized use of Apple’s trademark App Store.
Apple stated that it had coined the term “App Store” in July 2008 when it launched the service and has since spent millions of dollars on advertising the service through television, print and internet. Apple said that its application for registering the App Store as a trademark has been approved by the US Patent and Trademark Office, a move that was fiercely opposed by Microsoft. The case is currently being heard by an appeals board. It seeks unspecified damages and wants the court to stop Amazon from using the phrase with immediate effect.
