It appears that Amazon.com has finally responded to the suit filed against it by Apple over Amazon’s use of the name “Appstore” for its mobile application store, which Apple claims infringes on its “App Store” copyright. In the response, which was filed late Monday night, Amazon asserts that the phrase “app store” is generic and that even Apple’s own CEO, Steve Jobs, uses the term in a generic manner to refer to competing application storefronts on the Android platform.
In an Apple quarterly earnings calls, Jobs was quoted as saying the following:
“So there will be at least four app stores on Android, which customers must search among to find the app they want and developers will need to work with to distribute their apps and get paid. This is going to be a mess for both users and developers. Contrast this with Apple’s integrated App Store, which offers users the easiest-to-use largest app store in the world, preloaded on every iPhone.”
Amazon quoted the last sentence of that passage in its countersuit, and also referred to the Oxford English Dictrionary’s definition of the term “app” and the fact that the American Dialect Society voted “app” the “Word of the Year” for 2010 as proof of the generic nature of “app store.”
Courtesy : http://www.mobileburn.com