A smart report in the Financial Times by Richard Waters nicely summarizes the next stage of tumult in the gadget wars: “The smartphone industry’s escalating patent wars spilt into new areas on Monday as Microsoft attempted to block sales of Barnes & Noble’s Nook e-reader in the US and Apple sued Amazon over the use of the phrase ‘app store’.” What makes the report so smart? Waters observes, “Both actions were aimed indirectly at Google’s Android operating system, whose success with smartphones has attracted a widening ecosystem of retailers and technology companies, extending it to a broader array of mobile gadgets and living-room devices.”

The Microsoft suit against B&N (and the manufacturers of the Nook) says the device infringes on five of its patents, but Waters notes that “Microsoft launched a similar action last year against Motorola’s use of the Google operating system in smartphones, with the case later extended to the company’s tablet computers.” Thus, he adds, the case “takes the legal campaign beyond the traditional mobile computing industry. With Android now used on a growing array of devices, including television set-top boxes, one knowledgeable observer said Microsoft’s stance appeared to indicate a determination to assert its rights in a far wider array of consumer electronics fields.”

The Apple suit against Amazon, meanwhile, comes amid rumors that many new hires recently made by Amazon are for developers of a new Android-based Kindle, which would mean a new app store must be in development too. And in fact, the FT story reports that Amazon has admitted using the term “Amazon Appstore” in communications with those developers. Apple says it trademarked the term is trademarked. However, behind that claim, says Waters, is the fact that “An Amazon store would compete directly with one run by Google, and would extend the reach of Amazon’s digital markets beyond its traditional web site and Kindle bookstore.”

Sounds like nonsense, but fear of Apple seems widespread nonetheless: note that none of the other ginormous players call their app store, well, an app store, even though that’s what it is. “Google calls its version the Android Market, while the app store linked to Microsoft’s mobile software is called Marketplace.”