I feel a little sorry for Apple on this (and I don't care much for the company in general). When they introduced the term 'app store' it came across as very much part of their branding - much as iNoun and iVerb do.

I didn't care for the term, because I'm old-fashioned enough to dislike contractions such as 'app'. But at the same time, I thought it was a fantastic bit of brand management, because the shortened word reflected not only the parent brand (App[le]), but the miniaturized computer that the iPhone actually was, and also managed users' expectations about what an individual app would do - rather less than something as grand sounding as an 'application', but still handy. If Microsoft had been first to market with such a device, I feel sure they'd have called the apps 'programmettes' or something equally unwieldy :) The 'store' part was also shrewd branding - it made it clear from the outset that apps had a value and that users were expected to invest in extending the device's features. This was a bold move on Apple's part, but one that paid off in spades. If anything, it reinforced the idea in my mind that 'app store' was an Apple thing. I am astonished to find that they did not have a trademark registration in place, or at least an active claim. 'App' was not a new word, as such - the phrase 'killer app' had been around since the 80s - but outside of the software industry, few referred to programs as 'apps' on a regular basis. See http://correlate.googlelabs.com/search?e=app&t=weekly, http://correlate.googlelabs.com/search?e=app+store&t=wee..., and http://www.google.com/insights/search/#q=app%20%2Ciphone%2Cp... - hardly conclusive, but strongly suggestive.

The problem stemmed from Steve Jobs' habit of talking about the Apple 'lifestyle' as if Apple products were ubiquitous and were the only technology platform people used - true enough for many of the firm's devoted fans. This reflected in the deliberately generic naming patterns for Apple offerings - iTunes, iPhone, iMovie and so on. But Jobs got into talking about apps and the app store as generic items, because he was preaching to the converted; if he had kept emphasizing 'the app store' then maybe it would have reinforced the term as 'the specific software distribution service offered by Apple, Inc.'. It's a fine line to walk, of course; ubiquity and inevitability are usually good connotations for a brand to have, but so are freedom and exclusivity. In Apple's case, they were running up against the limits of their famous 1984 Think Different ad, and trying to balance the actuality of vendor lock-in with the feeling of openness and user-centricity. If they had sought a trademark for 'appstore' or variations thereon at the same time they launched the iPhone, it would probably have attracted little notice, but it seems as if they took a gamble on the strength of their secondary meaning, and lost.

[Edit: Apple has applied for trademarks on 'appstore' in many countries but no registrations have been granted. Foolishly, I referred back to my comment in the other paragraph instead of to the judgement, and confused myself in the process.]

Lovely work by Amazon's lawyers, at least to my amateur eyes - the blend of reason, case law and statute makes Apple's overreach look all the more strained, and the longer the Amazon appstore stays up and the sky in Cupertino fails to fall, the weaker Apple's arguments look. At least, weaker by comparison - they still made a good case. If nothing else, I'm grateful for discovering the existence of Interstellar Starship Services Ltd. v. Epix, Inc.