SEATTLE — This week’s initial ruling against Apple in its trademark dispute that allows Amazon.com to keep the name “Appstore” for Android might be good news for adult app provider MiKandi.
MiKandi changed the name of its “app store” to the “MiKandi App Market” after it was hit with a cease and desist order from Apple earlier this year.
The company felt it didn’t have the deep pockets to go head-to-head with Apple’s lawyers.
“The bottom line was that our pockets are not deep enough to defend ourselves should Apple go after us. So we made the change a few months ago, shortly after the news of the C&D (cease and desist) went public. The ironic thing is we’re known as the porn app store because of Steve Jobs,” MiKandi co-founder Jen McEwen told Geekwire in an email.
In her decision this week, U.S. District Judge Phyllis Hamilton rejected Apple’s request for a preliminary injunction against Amazon and wrote, “The evidence does show that Apple has spent a great deal of money on advertising and publicity, and has sold/provided/furnished a large number of apps from its AppStore, and the evidence also reflects actual recognition of the ‘App Store’ mark. However, there is also evidence that the term ‘app store’ is used by other companies as a descriptive term for a place to obtain software applications for mobile devices.”
As a result, McEwen said that the trademark dispute may be a positive for her company pointing to Jobs' comment at the iPhone OS 4.0 event last year, “You know, there’s a porn store for Android. Anyone can download them. You can, your kids can. That’s just not a place we want to go.”
“Actually maybe Apple has a soft spot for us,” McEwen wrote in her email. “Their CEO was our top promoter last year, and they only sent us a C&D, but they sued Amazon for infringement.”