July 07, 2011, 2:58 PM — Guess what? You can say "app store" again!
Yesterday a California court told Apple that the way it used the term "App Store" is not "renowned" or "prominent" enough to consider it a trademark well established enough to prevent other companies from using it.
Apple sued Amazon last March asking for damages and an injunction to keep the world's largest online store from using the term "Appstore" for a store that sells apps because, obviously, apple had already used those words.
It was turned down by the judge, who said the words app and store even combined and capitalized and printed near an Apple logo, are still generically simple descriptive terms just like "liquor" and "store, " "groceries" and "store" or "ego" and "massive, pretentious."
Obviously the judge was not aware that any idea created, developed or categorized as "Mine!" by a scream and quick-toddler grab from Steve Jobs is automatically both prominent and renowned enough to qualify as a trademark, whether a judge agrees or not.
Apple will reportedly respond within months by eliminating support in the MacOS for the Lanham Act – the federal law that provides the platform on which U.S. trademark law is built, and relevant portions of the U.S. Constitution.
These "laws" are relics of the analog age that are technically outdated, weak from a design perspective and often lacking in support for Apple itself, according to a source from Apple we can't identify because his ego couldn't fit through the door of the coffee shop where we met, so he had to call on his iPhone.
By eliminating support within the MacOS and iOS for the applicabl U.S. laws, Apple will make them irrelevant to the computing public at large and cause them to gently, naturally reach the end of their useful life, the source said.
"Constitutional Law had its place in history, especially when Microsoft owned the whole IT industry and had to keep Apple in business – no matter how badly Apple did financially or technically -- to avoid looking even more like a monopoly," the source said. "Now that the real CEO is back in place, Microsoft is sinking under its own weight and Apple is making great strides in convincing people "computers" don't have to do much more than touch up digital photos and browse the Web, we can dispense with all that.
"We don't even have to do anything," the source said. "We'll just leave it out of the shipping version and eventually it will disappear from other hardware as well. People might complain about losing other rights – like free speech. But MacOS and iOS developers gave that up to Applle years ago and don't seem to miss it. We don't let them say they miss it, anyway."
The source went on to say Apple will appeal the App Store judgement and continue litigation defending its right to trademark all words misspelled by having the letter "i" appended to the front, as well as 23 of the 25 remaining letters of the alphabet.
As soon as Apple gets a federal judge to sign off on that one, you'll have to pay licensing fees any time you use any of the trademarked letters.
Until then, at least you can say "app store," unless you spell it with both P's in the first word. Microsoft trademarked that, along with the words "Android," "Patent Troll," and "Extortion."
