Stefan Mileschin

A court has ruled partly against Apple, finding that Amazon is not guilty of false advertising over the term 'AppStore'.

Judge Phyllis Hamilton, Oakland, California, allowed Amazon to go for a partial summary judgment. There are other claims that will still go into court, including Apple's allegations that Amazon was involved in trademark infringement, Reuters reports.

Apple was furious when Amazon began advertising its own Appstore, which Cupertino declared was its property. The argument was that anything too close to Apple's "APP STORE" could intentionally mislead people and lure developers to Amazon's mobile software service rather than its own.

It is just one of many cases the litigious company has launched against its competition since late CEO Steve Jobs insisted that the company would wage "thermonuclear war" on the Android platform.

Amazon previously pointed out that current Apple CEO Tim Cook, as well as Steve Jobs, had both used the term to describe markets on other platforms - suggesting that the term had become generic even for the company's top brass.

Judge Hamilton has now officially ruled that Amazon using the term 'Appstore' is not false advertising.

According to Hamilton, Apple "failed to establish that Amazon made any false statement (express or implied) of fact that actually deceived or had the tendency to deceive a substantial segment of its audience".

The rest of the dispute will go to the Northern District of California court this August.

http://news.techeye.net/mobile/apple...re-court-claim