Jobs Himself May Have Sunk Apple's "App Store" Trademark Infringment Claim Against Amazon

In its suit, Apple accuses Amazon of trade­mark infringe­ment and unfair com­pe­ti­tion. Moreover, Apple noted that Amazon did not ade­quately respond to a num­ber of Apple requests that they cease call­ing their app store, well, an app store. Notably, Apple is engaged in a sim­i­lar legal spat with Microsoft over the very same issue, with Microsoft seek­ing to block Apple’s trade­mark, alleg­ing that “App Store” is a generic phrase that doesn’t war­rant trade­mark protection.

Now, a few weeks later, Amazon has finally responded to Apple’s ini­tial suit and has asked a Federal Judge in San Francisco to dis­miss the suit and issue a declara­tory judg­ment rul­ing that Amazon isn’t infring­ing on Apple’s trade­mark rights. Interestingly enough, Amazon’s answer uses state­ments from none other than Apple CEO Steve Jobs in an effort to prove that the term ‘app store’ is a generic designation.

Amazon specif­i­cally high­lights com­ments made by Jobs dur­ing an Apple earn­ings con­fer­ence call held last Fall. During the course of the call, Jobs repeat­edly made ref­er­ence to “app stores” that weren’t in ref­er­ence to Apple’s iTunes App Store.

If their own CEO is going to use the term “app store” to refer to non-Apple appli­ca­tion stores, it’s a tough argu­ment to make that oth­ers can’t. It’s a rare slip up from Jobs. I bet he’s pissed. I’d be pissed.