- Jan 5, 2011
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You likely forgot about this one. We sure did. With all the crazy lawsuits that Apple has been spamming the court system with, it was easy to do. This particular case was one of their sillier ones. Way back in the middle of 2011 Apple sued Amazon for naming their app store, "the Amazon Appstore."
Apparently, Apple's lawyers believe that this name is too close to their "App Store" name, and that Amazon was using this as deceptive advertising to lure unsuspecting customers away from Apple. Of course, Apple did what their lawyers really love to do, they sued amazon over trademark infringement. The case has only just now hit the courts, and Amazon just filed a motion to have the case thrown out. Here's a quote with the humorous details,
But in a filing on Wednesday with the U.S. District Court in Oakland, California, Amazon said the term "app store" has become so generic that its use could not constitute false advertising.
Amazon added that even Apple Chief Executive Tim Cook and his predecessor Steve Jobs have used the term to discuss rivals, with Cook having commented on "the number of app stores out there" and Jobs referring to the "four app stores on Android."
"Apple presumably does not contend that its past and current CEOs made false statements regarding to those other app stores to thousands of investors in earnings calls," Amazon said.
"To the contrary, the use of the term 'app store' to refer to stores selling apps is commonplace in the industry."
Kristin Huguet, an Apple spokeswoman, declined to comment.
If the judge doesn't laugh/throw this case out, the trial is scheduled for August 19, 2013. The hearing for the motion to dismiss is on October 31st of this year.
Source: Reuters
*Bonus Extra Story: Apple Sues Polish Grocery Store for the A.pl Name*
Here's a story from a couple weeks ago that we found too disgusting to post. However, because this Amazon story cropped up, we thought it worth adding on to make a point. It seems that Apple's lawyers have extended their patent/trademark lawsuits to ridiculous extremes. According to this article from PCMag, Apple is suing a small locally owned online grocery store in Poland because they used A.pl as their website address. What is especially silly about this is that *.pl is simply the internet country code for Poland, so it is really just a clever play on characters for the grocery store.
Apple is also requesting that the Polish Patent Office revoke the store's trademark on the A.pl logo shown above. Apple believes that the grocer is trying to deceptively confuse customers. Apparently these were such egregious affronts to the integrity of Apple's name that the Cupertino company simply had to put the hammer down. Nevermind the fact that a little family owned Polish grocery store doesn't even sell the same products (they do sell apples by the way - the fruit, not the tech gadgets). Talk about picking on the little guy...
It makes you wonder if one day Apple will decide to sue "Mother Nature/God" for Apple trademark infringement. [Editor's note: After looking at these cases, how can any reasonable person still say that Apple is not acting like a patent/trademark troll?]
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