US District Court for Northern California, Judge Phyllis Hamilton has denied Apple’s request for an injunction preventing Amazon from using the term “App Store.”
Apple first filed its suit back in March, when Amazon launched its Appstore for Android. The maker of the popular devices such as iPhone & iPad said that Amazon would “confuse and mislead customers” by using the term.
The judge wrote:
The court finds that Apple has not established likelihood of success as to the infringement claims… The court does not agree with Amazon that the mark is purely generic, for the reasons argued by Apple, but also does not find that Apple has shown that the mark is suggestive, as there appears to be no need for a leap of imagination to understand what the term means… Apple speculates that Amazon’s App Store will allow inappropriate content, viruses, or malware to enter the market, but it is not clear how that will harm Apple’s reputation, since Amazon does not offer apps for Apple devices.
For the moment Amazon is free to use “App Store” to describe its own store for at least 1 year as the trial for Apple vs Amazon won’t start until October 2012.
[Source 1]– CNET
[Source 2]– United States District Court
