Court Says Amazon Can Use 'App Store' Term Despite Apple Owning The Trademark

Apple has lost a round in court over Amazon’s use of the term, “app store” to describe their own online application store. A California court dismissed Apple’s 2011 lawsuit against the company, according to a tweet from Bloomberg. A subsequent post on the business site confirmed the news. In dismissing the case, the court said that Amazon did not use false advertising when they used the words "app store" when launching the AppStore for Android in March 2011. Subsequently, the store began selling Kindle Fire apps at the end of that same year.

FLASH: Amazon wins dismissal of Apple's false advertising claim — Bloomberg News (@BloombergNews) January 2, 2013

As TechCrunch said in September, "Amazon asked a federal judge to dismiss Apple’s Fifth Cause of Action in the case – the aforementioned “false advertising” claim." Apple's battle with Amazon was the result of Cupertino's 2008 trademark submission for the term “App Store” in the United States. Amazon, along with a host of other companies like Microsoft, believe that the phrase is generic and shouldn’t be trademarked. At least one California court seems to have agreed. Source: Bloomberg

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