Apple and Amazon Settle 'App Store' Dispute
The long dispute between Apple and Amazon over the term "App Store" has come to an end, with Apple agreeing to end the lawsuit with promises from Amazon not to countersue, reports Reuters.
"We no longer see a need to pursue our case," Apple spokeswoman Kristin Huguet said. "With more than 900,000 apps and 50 billion downloads, customers know where they can purchase their favorite apps."
Martin Glick, a lawyer for Amazon, said in an interview, "This was a decision by Apple to unilaterally abandon the case, and leave Amazon free to use 'appstore.'"
Apple and Amazon's disagreement arose after Amazon debuted the "Amazon Appstore" in March of 2011, three years after Apple launched its own App Store. Apple sued just days after the Amazon Appstore was made available, asking the court to prevent Amazon from using the term as it tarnished the reputation of the Apple App Store.
Amazon responded with a request to throw out the trademark suit, calling the "app store" term generic, a position that Microsoft also took when Apple's trademark was originally filed.
Early this year, Amazon successfully had a portion of Apple’s lawsuit dismissed, following claims last year that Apple had failed to demonstrate "real evidence of actual confusion" between app stores, suggesting that Apple was "not likely to prevail" in the suit.
Popular Stories
Apple is set to unveil iOS 18 during its WWDC keynote on June 10, so the software update is a little over six weeks away from being announced. Below, we recap rumored features and changes planned for the iPhone with iOS 18. iOS 18 will reportedly be the "biggest" update in the iPhone's history, with new ChatGPT-inspired generative AI features, a more customizable Home Screen, and much more....
Apple today released several open source large language models (LLMs) that are designed to run on-device rather than through cloud servers. Called OpenELM (Open-source Efficient Language Models), the LLMs are available on the Hugging Face Hub, a community for sharing AI code. As outlined in a white paper [PDF], there are eight total OpenELM models, four of which were pre-trained using the...
Apple has announced it will be holding a special event on Tuesday, May 7 at 7 a.m. Pacific Time (10 a.m. Eastern Time), with a live stream to be available on Apple.com and on YouTube as usual. The event invitation has a tagline of "Let Loose" and shows an artistic render of an Apple Pencil, suggesting that iPads will be a focus of the event. Subscribe to the MacRumors YouTube channel for more ...
Best Buy is discounting a collection of M3 MacBook Pro computers today, this time focusing on the 14-inch version of the laptop. Every deal in this sale requires you to have a My Best Buy Plus or Total membership, although non-members can still get solid second-best prices on these MacBook Pro models. Note: MacRumors is an affiliate partner with Best Buy. When you click a link and make a...
There are widespread reports of Apple users being locked out of their Apple ID overnight for no apparent reason, requiring a password reset before they can log in again. Users say the sudden inexplicable Apple ID sign-out is occurring across multiple devices. When they attempt to sign in again they are locked out of their account and asked to reset their password in order to regain access. ...
Apple used to regularly increase the base memory of its Macs up until 2011, the same year Tim Cook was appointed CEO, charts posted on Mastodon by David Schaub show. Earlier this year, Schaub generated two charts: One showing the base memory capacities of Apple's all-in-one Macs from 1984 onwards, and a second depicting Apple's consumer laptop base RAM from 1999 onwards. Both charts were...
Top Rated Comments
Wrong.
Amazon wanted to call it appstore. Apple didn't want them to call it appstore.
Amazon gets to call it appstore.
Amazon wins.
Who the hell are you trying to fool here? We get it, you're a die hard fan of Apple, we all love Apple but we're not all so stuborn that we cant admit when Apple looses out.
The facts are:
- Amazon wanted to be able to legally use the term 'Appstore'
- Apple didn't want them to be able to do that.
- Apple gave up in the end.
- Amazon got what they wanted from the get go.
You can come up with ifs and buts all day long, but the fact is, Amazon won.
In this case it was very sensible given how stupid it was in the first place. There was no way in hell Apple would get the rights to take control of 'Appstore' as a term.
----------
Uh yes. It was an Amazon win. Amazon wanted to use the term - and now they can. Amazon win, regardless of how you put it. It had nothing to do with sales figures or statistics, it was the naming.
Amazon won - fact.
Yes, Amazon won, Apple lost.