Amazon responds to Apple: "app store" is generic, drop the suit | Hacker News Reader

Amazon responds to Apple: "app store" is generic, drop the suit

arstechnica.com

45 pointsgrellas27 comments

My comments as posted last month when Apple first filed this suit are here: http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2352076 (analyzing the pertinent trademark issues in some detail).

An argument that I'm surprised nobody has realized is the fact that "killer app" was in general parlance way before the iPhone was released (at least a decade). This is killer evidence that app was a generic term way back when Apple was struggling to sell plastic purses.

IMO, so is "1-Click".

Patents and trademarks are different.

1-Click is a trademark too, not just a patent.

But 1-Click is not a generic name.

Is Amazon suing anyone for saying something like "I did it in one click" ?

Not that I know of.

But if I remember correctly, it wouldn't/doesn't let anyone use "1-Click" for ecommerce checkout buttons without licensing it. And I think it even tried to prohibit others from enabling a one-step checkout process. In other words, retailers had to at least have a two-step checkout process.

That's just bad for the end-user.

While I don't agree, I thought that it was the concept of allowing you to click and checkout out, not "1-click," thought they might have a copyright or trademark on it with a capital c and/or the design of the button?

That's a patent, not a trademark (well, I mean, they might have a trademark too since Amazon owns the whole idea, but it was the patent that got their lawyers so heated up). Amazon patented the idea of buying the items in a shopping cart with one click.

I'm pretty sure there is not a shopping cart involved. You just click the item and it aggregates your shipments as necessary and automatically selects destination and payment as configured by the user.

It's a business process which I thought were not patentable but it was reaffirmed in 2007. It's set to expire in 2017 so in a few years whatever advantage this patent gave Amazon will dissolve. Personally, I'm scared of all the half-assed implementations that will no doubt mushroom all over the web at that time.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1-Click

Apple isn't suing for someone using the term "app store" in a sentence, they are suing for a product having app store in its name.

They sued Barnes and Noble over their "Express Checkout" option right after they got the 1-Click patent. Settled privately, though.

http://news.cnet.com/2100-1017-854105.html

That suit is about a patent, and not about a trademark.

I mostly agree, but I think that "app store" is far more descriptive of what the actual product is, and has nearly no similar alternates. "1-Click" doesn't really describe what it actually does, and there are plenty of other ways to say the same thing (even "Single Click", "Immediate Checkout", etc).

Except that they have a patent (not just a trademark) on that, so you can't just do it with a different name. Apple actually licenses the use of 1 click for iTunes, maybe also for the app store.

Right, and that is ridiculous. I was merely saying that a trademark on "1-Click" is slightly less silly than a trademark on "App Store", not making a positive statement about Amazon's exercise of IP in general.

Amazon devised a clever checkout method that was unique and at least required a little bit of innovation on their part. Apple sold things in a store and named it the "Thing Store."

I really don't think it's a fair comparison...

I agree. So call your checkout "1-Click", get sued by Amazon, and have your lawyers reply saying you think it's actually OK.

That's ridiculous, nobody refers to the process of checking out as "1-click"-ing, there are even non-alphabetic symbols in there, that is not a generic name. You're just being knee-jerk in your desire to defend apple.

It's not the name 1-click, it's the process of single click checkouts. Amazon patented it, and actually Apple pays a license fee to use it (they were the first to pay the fee, if I remember correctly - of course it could be a 1 cent per million use fee that is intended to legitimize the patent rather than actually earn revenue for Amazon, but I think Amazon's smarter than that).

Huh? Who the hell is talking about patents? When stevenj said "so is 1-click" he was referring to the argument that "app store" is a generic name in the context of trademarks. You are confusing trademarks and patents and not making any sense.

Now you are just purposely confusing trademarks with patents in a kneejerk defense of Apple.

AFAIK you can register a generic term provided no other body objects during the registration period or the term is not already in use in the relevant industry. I actually have no idea about how the law defines generic names, can anyone enlighten?

The thing about trademarks is that they can become invalid if the meaning of the term changes over time. Even if App Store only referred to Apple's when they registered it, if the term has become generic then Apple can lose their trademark on it. One of the ways to (attempt to) prevent this is to sue the pants off of anyone who tries to use it generically.

It's fun to take a look at the history of the trademark application here: http://tarr.uspto.gov/servlet/tarr?regser=serial&entry=7...

It appears the first application was rejected (without a third party objecting), following amendments went back and forth twice before amazon's intervention. So much drama

Amazon calling their store the "app store" is confusing as hell, and is meant to confuse your average user into believing it's the same thing as Apple's.

"App Store" is about as generic as "Amazon".

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