Apple Loses Its Australian Appeal For ‘App Store’ Trademark

Apple is a company that is well known for taking care of its intellectual property, but here is an instance where the court did not find the ruling in Apple’s favor. An Australian court decided to throw out Apple’s appeal of a prior ruling which saw the “app store” moniker to be unavailable for trademark due to the fact that the term is deemed to be too descriptive.

Federal Court of Australia Justice David Yates threw out Apple’s appeal of a decision that was handed down by the country’s Registrar of Trade Marks, which denied rights to the term “app store,” and asked the company to pay the resulting legal costs which were associated with the case.

Justice Yates mentioned, “Apple has not established that, because of the extent to which it has used the mark before the filing date, it does distinguish the designated services as being Apple’s services. It follows that APP STORE must be taken as not being capable of distinguishing the designated services as Apple’s services. The application must, therefore, be rejected.”

Of course, one ought to take note that this isn’t the first time that such a case happened concerning the “app store” name. Do you think that the Australian court was right in its ruling?

Edwin Kee
Categories: Apple
Tags: App Store, Legal, Patent