14 DAY TRIAL // Microsoft is again attempting to thwart Apple’s ongoing efforts to trademark the seemingly too generic “App Store” dubbing, this time by saying that Apple’s response to Microsoft’s latest filing with the USPTO violated rules that limit briefs to 25 pages, with text being written in 11 point font.
In other words, Apple bended the rules to include more arguments in its brief.
“Apple’s response brief is 31 pages, including the table of contents and table of authorities, and on information and belief, is printed in less than 11 point font,” reads the motion filed this week by Microsoft's legal representatives.
The documents in question are Apple’s answer to Microsoft’s original complaint alleging that the Cupertino giant should not be allowed to trademark “App Store”.
The Mac maker is being accused of manipulating the text to insert more arguments that aim to trump Microsoft’s opposition to the App Store trademark application, according to GeekWire.
Indeed, Apple has gone out of its way to prove that Microsoft is wrong in its allegations.
In the 31-page document, Apple tells the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office that “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.”
Microsoft itself “faced a decades-long genericness challenge to its claimed WINDOWS mark,” Apple noted.
"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," said Apple in its filing.
Microsoft is now asking the USPTO to demand that Apple file a new brief which “complies with the rules and does not add any new matter or arguments.”