Apple is losing the App Store argument

THE CAPPUCCINO FIRM Apple has lost in its latest attempt to stop Amazon from using the term App Store to describe a store that sells miniature software applications.

According to a court document seen by Reuters, it is unlikely that anyone would get confused by the use of the term and sit at home trying to download apps from an Amazon store to a device that does not automatically link up with the web site and is made by Apple.

US District Judge Phyllis Hamilton said that the term was purely generic, like toy store, and in her decision wrote that Apple had not provided enough evidence to suggest "a likelihood of confusion".

Despite protests from Apple, Amazon has always argued that the term is generic, a point of view that we would be hard pressed to disagree with.

Judge Hamilton has been looking at the case for some time and just two weeks ago was ladling scorn onto Apple's arguments, something that Amazon has also excelled at.

"Customers who have shopped for and purchased expensive mobile devices are, at the very minimum, sophisticated enough to know, if they choose to buy apps at all, that the apps they acquire must be compatible with the device they own," it said in a statement released earlier. µ