Did you pull a tissue from that box, or is it a Kleenex?
Do you associate the term "App Store" with Apple products, or do you think in generalities?
A Federal judge in California appears to be leaning in the direction of words made products when it comes to Apple's lawsuit against Amazon.
Apple took Amazon to court, claiming infringement on "App Store". Clients will be confused, Apple said, and that will harm their business. For its part, Amazon insists that "app store" is a generic term that refers to anyplace selling applications for any electronic device.
Like Xerox, the brand name has become the product.
Apple might have invented the label, but it's become so ubiquitous that the general public doesn't associate it strictly with Apple. Anyone with an Apple device will go to Apple's app store because they know that's where they'll find the programs to make their iPod or iPad or iPhone perform a desired function.
Customers aren't so stupid as Apple would like to make them out to be in its effort to force Amazon to stop using "app store" for its collection of Android applications. End users know what they want and they know where to find it.
There is no trademark infringement here.
It's a case of a business developing a product that swept through the industry and became a common name. Apple's problem isn't with Amazon, it's with the public who embraced the new technology.
As much as Apple would like them to think that "App Store" is Apple, they don't see it that way.
Apple has lost control of a couple of words and there's no going back in the public's mind. There's no changing terminology when the brand name becomes the common name and there's no suing the world for mis-using a phrase.
Just ask Kimberly-Clark.
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