The battle over the term "app store" continued this week, as Microsoft, HTC, Nokia, and Sony Ericsson teamed up and asked European officials to invalidate Apple's "app store" and "appstore" trademarks.
The four companies on Thursday filed separate requests with the Office for Harmonization in the Internal Market (OHIM), a trademark organization based in Alicante, Spain. Through OHIM, Apple has successfully trademarked the terms "app store" and "appstore," but Microsoft, HTC, Nokia, and Sony Ericsson want OHIM to reverse its decision because the trademarks lack distinctiveness.
"Microsoft and other leading technology companies are seeking to invalidate Apple's trademark registrations for APP STORE and APPSTORE before the European Community Trademark Office," Microsoft said in a statement. "Apple has claimed that it alone has the right to use the phrase 'App Store.' Today's filings by HTC, Nokia, Sony Ericsson, and Microsoft, like Amazon's recent action, demonstrate the breadth of opposition to Apple's unsupportable claim of exclusivity.
Microsoft and the other companies argued that "'App store,' like 'toy store' or 'book store,' is a generic term that should continue to be available for everyone to use for stores that sell apps."
Apple has already been waging a legal battle here in the U.S. against companies using the term "app store," including Microsoft and Amazon.
In March, Apple sued Amazon over its Amazon Appstore, arguing that Apple has the exclusive rights to the phrase because of its iTunes App Store. Apple has targeted Microsoft on similar grounds.
Last month, Amazon responded to the suit, arguing that the term "app store" is generic and that Apple should not be allowed to use it exclusively. Amazon cited the American Dialect Society, which recently voted "app" as the Word of the Year for 2010, noting "that although the word 'has been around for ages,' it 'really exploded in the last 12 months,' with the arrival of 'app stores' for a wide spectrum of operating systems for phones and computers.' Indeed the words 'app store' are commonly used among many businesses in the app store market," Amazon argued.
Microsoft has made a similar argument in its legal wranglings with Cupertino. In Microsoft's original motion, it cited cases in the press where "app store" was used to refer to a generic storefront for mobile apps.
In a 25-page brief (PDF) filed in March with the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office (USPTO), Apple hit back. "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," Apple argued.
Editor's Note: This story was updated at 11:25am Eastern with comment from Microsoft.