Apple has filed proceedings against Amazon in the federal court for the Northern District of California in the US for choosing to call its marketplace for mobile applications the “Amazon Appstore”. Apple claims that use of the word “Appstore” is deliberately similar to its “App Store” branding for its own mobile marketplace where applications are available for download onto mobile operating systems. Apple argues the similarity in name will cause confusion for consumers.
Apple is currently trying to register the trade mark for “App Store” in the US, although Microsoft has opposed the application – Microsoft intends to offer its own mobile marketplace and argues that the words “App Store” are too generic to be registered as a trade mark.