Intellectual Property Law

It's a Crazy Intellectual Property World

From Apple trying to register a trademark of "App Store" to Apple suing someone for selling white iPhone kits, to CBS being the subject of a lawsuit for copyright infringement; it is a crazy intellectual property world.

Do not wade through the waters of intellectual property alone - let's go through some of the difficult stories.

Apple's "Appstore" Trademark

I do not believe that Apple will be able to either register "Appstore" or "App Store" as a trademark or successfully win its lawsuit for trademark infringement against Amazon.com. This is because many people for years have been using "app" as a shortened form for the word "application." To me, "app" is a generic term and "store" is a generic term used for "a store in which one buys applications." As the story says, "the threshold that businesses must cross in order to avoid being deemed to use a generic term" will be decided in these cases.

"

Apple II

Apple has filed suit against a small company run by a teen that sells conversion kits to make your iPhone 4 white. To me, it seems more of an issue of trade dress than trademark infringement, though the website's name does use iPhone.