Apple and Microsoft are butting heads again, the latest in a long line of disputes against the tech giants. This time out, the companies are doing battle over Apple’s trademark claims on the admittedly broad term “App Store.” Apple, essentially, is claiming that it can own the term, seeing as how when people think “App Store,” they think “Apple.”
As the company put it in a recent 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.
Microsoft’s point, thus far, is that the term was generic long before Apple laid claim to it,
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.
As of late, however, the arguments have become far more nuanced, and now Microsoft is calling out Apple over the length of a legal filing, and the font size used in said filing. According to a newly discovered motion filed by Microsoft with the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office, “Apple’s response brief is 31 pages, including the table of contents and table of authorities, and on information and belief, is printed in less than 11 point font.”
Full text of this exciting motion can be found here.
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