Apple"s court fight with Amazon.com over the name of Amazon"s Appstore has gone through its first court fight and in this case Apple lost. As reported by News.com, a request by Apple to place a preliminary injunction on Amazon.com to keep them from using the name "Appstore" was denied by a federal Judge.
Apple first filed a lawsuit against Amazon back in March, claiming that naming Amazon"s Android-based download store "Appstore" was a violation of Apple"s trademarks. At the time Apple said the name "will confuse and mislead customers" who might think it is related to the App Store that downloads programs for Apple"s iOS devices. In April, Amazon.com decided to counter sue Apple, saying that the phrase "App Store" was too generic in scope.
In Wednesday court ruling, Judge Phyllis Hamilton of the U.S. District Court for Northern California said that Apple "has not established that its "App Store" mark is famous, in the sense of being "prominent" and "renowned."". While Apple has clearly spend a lot of money promoting the use of its App Store the judge added that "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." However she also stated that she didn"t agree with Amazon.com"s stance that the term "App Store" is completely generic. It"s likely that this is just the first stage of this court battle between the two rivals over the "App Store" name.