GetJar responds to Apple’s cease-and-desist letter over ‘App Store’ name

Apple is taking its fight to own the “App Store” moniker to a new opponent, and this time it’s GetJar. The Cupertino-based firm, which has filed similar lawsuits against both Amazon and Microsoft, sent the company a cease-and-desist letter asking it to stop using the name “App Store,” The Wall Street Journal reported on Monday. Apple believes that it owns the “App Store” trademark. Amazon responded and called the lawsuit “baseless.” Last week, a U.S. judge agreed and said that many other firms use the moniker as a descriptive term and that Apple’s use is “more descriptive than distinctive.” “GetJar has been in the business of offering apps to consumers since 2005, well before Apple, and helped to pioneer the model that the general public understands as an app store today,” GetJar CEO, Ilja Laurs, said. “We have built a strong, global and growing business around this model, and plan to continue to use the phrase ‘app store’ to describe what we do. This move by Apple is yet more proof that the company tends to act as if it is above the law, and even as one of the smaller players in the space, we won’t be bullied by Apple.” In a blog post on the company’s website, GetJar CMO Patrick Mork explained that GetJar simply redirects users to Apple’s own store and that GetJar won’t stop using the term anytime soon. “GetJar won’t be subject to this kind of bullying,” Mork said. “We’re not going to ‘Cease & Desist.’ We were here long before Steve & Co. We were built by developers, to help developers. Not to help sell handsets or search results. In the words of Twisted Sister: We’re not going to take it! Steve Jobs isn’t our Dad.”

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