Apple Quickly Becoming 'The Man' - The UpStream

Apple Quickly Becoming 'The Man'

posted Sunday Jul 10, 2011 by Scott Ertz

Apple Quickly Becoming 'The Man'

You have to admire the nerve of a company like Apple who started their life off with a commercial literally breaking people free from the man's hold on them with a sledgehammer going after companies for using a pretty common phrase that has been around since before Apple got into the mobile space. That, however, is exactly what has happened once again, this time between Apple and GetJar, a mobile phone application marketplace.

They refer to their marketplace as an app store, because it is, and apparently have since around 2005 when the company first launched this app store to the world (most likely for the Windows Mobile platform). Well, like Amazon before them, Apple claims this infringes on a trademark they registered in 2008 (3 years after GetJar started using the term).

How will this turn out? Hit the break for some idea.

CEO Ilja Lars said in a statement,

GetJar has been in the business of offering apps to consumers since 2005, well before Apple, and helped to pioneer the model that the general public understands as an app store today. We have built a strong, global and growing business around this model, and plan to continue to use the phrase "app store" to describe what we do. This move by Apple is yet more proof that the company tends to act as if it is above the law, and even as one of the smaller players in the space, we won't be bullied by Apple.

Sounds like another good fight will be starting soon. Luckily for GetJar, they recently received $25 million in investment capital, so they will actually have the cash to try and take down Apple. That fight might be a little easier thanks to a ruling on the Amazon case by a federal judge. It was said that Apple did not have a high enough likelihood of success for the judge to issue a preliminary injunction. That means, for the time being, Amazon can continue to operate with the name Amazon Appstore until the decision of the October trial is made.

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