Hasta La Gadget!

Microsoft this week filed a complaint with the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office, asking the organization to reject Apple’s request to patent the term “App Store.” The software giant is arguing that the term was generic long before Apple filed for a trademark, used to describe all manner of mobile application storefronts.

Says Microsoft (or, rather, Microsoft’s lawyers),

Any secondary meaning or fame Apple has in ‘App Store’ is de facto secondary meaning that cannot convert the generic term ‘app store’ into a protectable trademark. Apple cannot block competitors from using a generic name. ‘App store’ is generic and therefore in the public domain and free for all competitors to use.

Even Steve Jobs himself has used the term to refer to competing stores, according to Microsoft lawyers.

Here’s what Apple argues in its own filing,

The vastly predominant usage of the expression ‘app store’ in trade press is as a reference to Apple’s extraordinarily well-known APP STORE mark and the services rendered by Apple thereunder.

Certainly Apple’s store is the first that springs to mind when uttering the term, these days. But “vastly predominant usage” seems a bit much. I know we’ve certainly been guilty of bandying term about in reference to stores from Google, RIM, Microsoft, Palm, and others.