Apple Guns for GetJar

6:50 AM -- Apple Inc. (Nasdaq: AAPL)'s mission to prevent anyone from using the term "app store" just notched up a gear as it issued a "cease and desist" order to GetJar Networks Inc. , the largest independent, erm, "place where users can browse mobile apps and then download them."

Apple says it registered the trademark for "App Store" in 2008, according to The Wall Street Journal, which first reported the GetJar case. Now it wants to stop anyone else from using the term. Even after a U.S. court last week denied Apple's request for a preliminary injunction against Amazon.com Inc. (Nasdaq: AMZN) to stop using the name "Android AppStore," it has launched this fresh attack on its smaller rival GetJar.

GetJar's response? Evoking the sound defiance of Twisted Sister, "We're not going to take it! Steve Jobs isn’t our Dad." (GetJar's full response is on its blog here.)

But there's more. GetJar also kicked off a "Facebook Cause" called The Open And Free App Movement (#OFAM) to "encourage every pissed off developer, start-up, carrier, OEM or NGO who is fed up with this crap to make their voice heard." The company believes that the "ecosystem as a whole is becoming increasingly closed" and wants to fight against that trend.

That's not the fight Apple was looking for. But it's well worth it for GetJar to ride the publicity of Apple's "cease and desist" order to raise the profile of this issue.

— Michelle Donegan, European Editor, Light Reading Mobile