Amazon to Apple: "App Store" is Generic; Just Ask Your CEO

Uh, totally beside the point. He is referring to other stores being like the app store, that doesn’t mean they are OK with Amazon calling theirs the exact same thing (because they are incapable of any original ideas, apparently).

Pretty clear here Apple fans. He used “app store” generically.

There’s an App for that…..guess where? App Store. That’s called branding and Apple has one of the best brands out there.

When people think “App Store” they think Apple..period.

Your examples are flawed. It would be one thing if it was called “iPod App Store” or “iPhone App Store” or “iApp Store”. However, they specifically called their store something already generic. “app store”. Then, he used it generically, further cementing the fact that this was generic to begin with.

Imagine he had called it “Download Page”. He’d run into the same problem. Or if the iPod wasn’t called an iPod and was called something like “MP3 Player”. The term “app” had already been in wide use by developers as shorthand for “application” for MANY YEARS before the iPhone was even conceived. So, calling it “App Store” isn’t any more clever than calling it an “Application Store” which is terribly generic. It would be like a drug store calling their store “Drug Store” or “Rx Store” and then suing anyone else who uses “Drug Store” or “Rx Store” in their name. They’re going to lose.

The first rule of thumb when naming anything where you want to protect the name is to create something that couldn’t already be conceived as something that might be used generically in that particular context. Calling a search engine “Search Engine” or “Find Engine” is just asking for trouble. Going with something like “Google” or “Bing” for a search engine is what needs to be done. Naming a music player “Music Player” or “MP3 Player” or “Tunes Player” is, again, asking for trouble. Going with “iPod” or “Zune” is unique enough that it can’t be used generically outside of the context of the original.

Just because SOME consumers can be confused (those who probably don’t know how to reboot their computers) doesn’t mean ENOUGH consumers can be confused. Most people know full well what the Amazon App Store is and that it has nothing to do with Apple. If Amazon had called it “iPhone App Store” and featured Android apps, then they’d be asking for trouble.

Granted, Apple DID pour a lot of dollars and marketing to popularize the term “app” and “app store”. That isn’t being denied. All this really points to is the fact that they made a huge blunder. They took a generic term. They made it popular. And now this decision is coming back to haunt them. It happens all the time. They’re just going to have to deal with it, learn from it, and move on. They should have created a new word… used their “i” naming convention… or created a generic enough term that wouldn’t already feel normal to use in a generic context.

I mean, if you’re really going to split hairs, the Symbian OS originally referred to the apps for their phones as “apps” and even used the file extension “.app”. So, maybe Nokia needs to sue Apple over the term “app”? Just throwing “Store” on the end isn’t enough. Apple couldn’t have solved a lot of problems by just calling it their “iStore” but they didn’t and now they’re paying the price for that mistake.