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GetJar responds to Apple's cease and desist over App Store term
It's come out this week that Apple sent a letter last month to mobile application database GetJar asking them to cease and desist using the term "App Store" to describe their mobile app offerings. Apple's been trying to keep the term "App Store" for itself, with varying degrees of success, and this is another push by the Cupertino company to keep other mobile app platforms from confusing the iOS app delivery service with anything else. But GetJar's not budging -- a post on the service's developer blog says Apple can stuff it, more or less. To be fair, the company says it's not really competing with Apple, instead both directing customers to the iOS store, and serving lots of users from other systems and devices. But GetJar also says it's been running since 2005, before the iPhone's release, and it's been using the term "App Store" since 2009, even though Apple has issued the C&D only now. Apple's been unsuccessful in securing a trademark on the "App Store" term, it's lost injunctions against Amazon and Microsoft in the past regarding the term, and GetJar basically says that it won't kowtow to what it calls "bullying" by Apple. GetJar has also started a Facebook group called "The Open and Free App Movement," to better organize developers and application vendors who are "fed up with this crap." Interesting. We'll have to see what response Apple has to all of this. This might not be the fight it wanted to pick.
