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Comment by Anechoic | Hacker News Reader

> And like the term "Windows", "App Store" is a generic computing term that was in use prior to Apple's product.

Is there an example of the usage of the term "App Store" before Apple popularized it? The date search via Google hasn't turned up anything.

edit: I did find this blog post from 2006: http://nerddawg.blogspot.com/2006/08/debugging-windows-prese...

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I'm not sure the mere occurrence of the same phrase would invalidate someone's attempt to trademark it. I trademarked a two word phrase that has occurred before on the web, but it had no special meaning in the industry.

In other words, no company or process or device came to mind when people in the industry heard the phrase. Nobody had made an investment in it.

As part of the proof that the phrase wasn't special, I actually provided search urls for the phrase and explained how the usage in the top results was generic.

Is that a reference to a store, as in a place that sells things, or a store as in storage? I am not familiar with the topic discussed on the page, but to me, the term "app store" is referring to app caching/storage mechanism.

I'm not sure, I suspect it refers to storage, but that was the only example of the term 'app store' that I could find prior to Apple's app store announcement.

beej71 your comment is dead, but I presume this is the usenet post you were referring to: http://groups.google.com/group/rec.games.video.sony/browse_t...

The OP does realize that "Windows" is recognized as a valid trademark, yes?

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