Apple loses App Store trademark battle

OAKLAND, Calif., July 7 (UPI) -- A U.S. judge in California said Apple Inc. could not show its "App Store" mark is famous enough to warrant an injunction against Amazon's AppStore.

U.S. District Judge Phyllis Hamilton, in her rejection of Apple's request Wednesday, acknowledged Apple had spent a lot of time and money marketing its App Store, but said "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," PCMag.com reported.

Apple filed an application in 2008 with the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office to register the mark "App Store," and the office published a public notice of the filing.

PCMag said the public notice set off a legal fight with Microsoft, and when Amazon launched its Android AppStore in March 2010, Apple filed suit to stop Amazon's use of the term.

While Microsoft and Amazon have argued that the term "app store" is a generic one, and does not apply exclusively to Apple's App Store, Apple claimed the term is associated with that company and its use by other companies will dilute Apple's App Store brand, PCMag said.

Hamilton ruled "Apple has not established a likelihood of success on its dilution claim."

Apple announced last week its App Store downloads have topped 15 billion. There are 425,000 apps available in the store, with 100,000 native iPad apps, the report said.