14 DAY TRIAL // Judge Phyllis Hamilton has denied Apple’s request for a preliminary injunction with the aim to prevent Amazon’s use of the App Store term.
Apple originally filed suit against Amazon in March alleging that the online retailer’s then-newly-launched AppStore was confusing customers who may have mistaken it for Apple’s.
"…we've asked Amazon not to copy the app store name because it will confuse and mislead customers," the Mac maker said at the time.
Cupertino also said it wanted to trademark the term.
Amazon soon responded and since then, several countersuits have been fired back and forth between the two giant companies.
In a court filing last month, Apple said it "denies that the mark App Store is generic and, on that basis, denies that the Amazon Appstore for Android service is an 'app store’.”
Microsoft, along with other technology giants and rivals of Apple Inc. attempted to invalidate Apple's European trademarks.
Apple’s biggest rival, Microsoft even called on linguists to prove that the term App Store was too generic to allow the Mac maker to trademark in the U.S.
Most recently, an 18-page document filed with the U.S. District Court for Northern California reveals that Judge Phyllis Hamilton has denied Apple's request for a preliminary injunction that would prevent Amazon's use of the term, Cnet reports.
Even though Apple claims it has rights to trademark the dubbing, Judge Hamilton ruled that Apple had not provided enough evidence to show the Court that Amazon’s use of the same term creates confusion.
However, the Judge did agree with Apple that its ‘App Store’ term is not entirely generic. An excerpt from Judge Hamilton’s filing is included below, courtesy of Cnet:
The court finds that Apple has not established a likelihood of success on its dilution claim. First, Apple has not established that its "App Store" mark is famous, in the sense of being "prominent" and "renowned." The evidence does show that Apple has spent a great deal of money on advertising and publicity, and has sold/provided/furnished a large number of apps from its AppStore, and the evidence also reflects actual recognition of the "App Store" mark. However, there is also evidence that the term "app store" is used by other companies as a descriptive term for a place to obtain software applications for mobile devices.