14 DAY TRIAL // In a filing with the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office, Cupertino, California-based Apple Inc. is asking the USPTO to reconsider Microsoft’s allegations that the term ‘App Store’ is too generic to be granted as trademark to Apple.
The filing quotes a linguistics expert, Robert Leonard, as saying that “the predominant usage of the term APP STORE is as a proper noun to refer to Apple’s online application marketplace,” after examining the case.
But Apple doesn't stop here.
When it comes to proving to the world that its Arch rival is, once again, clueless in its own allegations, the Mac maker pulls out the big guns:
"Having itself faced a decades-long genericness challenge to its claimed WINDOWS mark, Microsoft should be well aware that the focus in evaluating genericness is on the mark as a whole and requires a fact-intensive assessment of the primary significance of the term to a substantial majority of the relevant public," reads Apple’s filing with the USPTO.
"Yet, Microsoft, missing the forest for the trees, does not base its motion on a comprehensive evaluation of how the relevant public understands the term APP STORE as a whole," adds the company behind the iconic iPod portable players.
Apple further responds to Microsoft’s claims that ‘App Store’ is too much of a generic term by pointing to the flurry of alternative names chosen by other companies to advertise their own application venues.
Of course, this doesn't exactly prove that ‘App Store’ isn't generic, but rather that Apple got to it first, forcing others to come up with their own in order to avoid potential legal fuss.
Yet, Apple also says that it has taken measures to ensure that others don’t use ‘App Store’ improperly, thus outlining what Apple believes is an obvious trademark-nature of the dubbing.
According to a report covering the spat, the ball is neither in Microsoft’s court, nor in Apple’s, but in the USPTO’s.
The trademark office is now tasked with thoroughly analyzing both companies’ versions of the story to determine whether to grant Microsoft's motion, or to allow the case to go to trial.