"Apple is defending its effort to trademark the phrase "App Store" against a Microsoft challenge, arguing the term is no more generic than the software giant's trademarked "Windows."
Apple's applied for the trademark in 2008, prompting a challenge by Microsoft, which contended the phrase is too generic to register and would restrict competitors' ability to use of the term to describe their own services. In a filing (PDF) yesterday with the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office, Apple asked that that challenge be dismissed and pointed out that one of Microsoft's most prominent trademarks has also been challenged as generic.
"Having itself faced a decades-long genericness challenge to its claimed Windows mark, 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," says Apple in the filing (Apple's emphasis). "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."
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