In an interview with Bloomberg, Salesforce CEO Marc Benioff tells an interesting tale of how he gave the App Store domain and trademark to to Apple as a gift to Steve Jobs. Of course, the App Store trademark itself is now under scrutiny, with Microsoft and Amazon claiming it is a generic term.

Apparently Benioff and some of his team met with Jobs in 2003, and Steve suggested they build an ecosystem around their Salesforce product, which Jobs praised. They wound up with App Exchange, but Benioff also trademarked App Store and bought the domain. When Apple launched an app ecosystem for the iPhone, Benioff was in the audience during the announcement. He went directly to Jobs at the event and said he was giving Apple the trademark and domain as a gift, thanking him for his sage advice in 2003.

It's a nice story, and sadly the kind of nice thing you don't hear that often in Silicon Valley these days.

[via The Next Web]