Microsoft has fired another volley in it’s legal spat with Apple. Microsoft filed a legal reply on Tuesday rebutting Apple’s arguments for the validity of its “App Store” trademark, as noted by GeekWire. In this rebuttal, Microsoft cites Amazon’s recently launched Appstore as evidence that the term is generic and necessary for Apple competitors to refer to their online storefronts.
“These uses, despite Apple’s continuing enforcement campaign, show beyond dispute that there is a competitive need for the term,” asserted Microsoft. Amazon’s Appstore brings the total of Apple competitors using the term to 17.
“Apple strains to keep ‘App Store’ for its exclusive use, even claiming that its online stores are not real stores, only metaphorical ones. But Apple cannot escape the hard truth: when people talk about competitors’ stores, they call them ‘app stores,'” the filing read, adding that The Washington Post, The New York Times, The Wall Street Journal and even Apple CEO Steve Jobs himself has referred to other application marketplaces generically as “app stores.”
Further degrading Apple’s attempt to protect the term, Microsoft asserts that Apple’s own arguments further prove the genericness of the disputed mark. Apple’s “supporting” evidence includes prior cases, press coverage and the aid of a linguistic expert. Microsoft has employed its own linguistic expert, Dr. Ronald Butters, to counter Apple’s claims.
Microsoft argues that a term can be classified as generic with just a few articles and a dictionary entry. “It is not about counting articles that mention an applicant, but rather whether there is persuasive evidence that the term is used to name the genus of goods,” the filing argued.
Microsoft first lodged its opposition to the trademark in January. Earlier this month, Apple responded by arguing that the term “Windows” was generic but still granted to the company because it held “the primary significance of the term to a substantial majority of the relevant public.” Microsoft responded by pointing out that Apple’s brief was too long and used a font size that was too small.
By Angela Meadon
