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I didn't. I didn't know Cisco had this product, but I'm also not exactly a prime candidate for their products either!

Cisco's iPhone is a VoIP phone, which is a very reasonable lateral move for a company specializing in enterprise IP hardware. Big companies want to get rid of their legacy telephone lines and consolidate communication over their more advanced data networks.

Apple is arguing that the two iPhone products are materially different because their's is a cellular phone whereas Cisco's is a wired IP phone. However, there is nothing (that I know of) preventing users from using Apple's iPhone as a wireless IP phone using Skype or something similar.

It's obvious that Cisco has the engineering resources to make their iPhone wireless as well. Cisco is arguing that while the products might be a bit different right now, trends in network consolidation suggest that the two products could very well compete head-to-head within a relative short timeframe.

Now, I don't think Cisco has plans to move into the cellular market or into the portable media player space, but it's not hard to see them doing a portable PIM device like a CrackBerry. So, the battle over the iPhone trademark is complicated by the fact that the Apple iPhone does so many things, a couple of which are reasonable market opportunities for Cisco.

I don't think there's any way that Apple is going to walk away from this lawsuit the victor. Either they'll change the name, pay Cisco an 8-figure settlement for the rights, or (most likely) grant Cisco some rights pertaining to iTunes/FairPlay.

This much is fairly clear. The multi-million-dollar question that nobody has convincingly answered is why this situation was allowed to get to this point. This is like watching a train wreck in slow motion, and considering the marketing prowess of at least one of the parties (if not both), there's got to be a reason why this trademark dispute was allowed to boil over like this. This lawsuit is probably in Apple's best interests for some reason, as if they are baiting Cisco into some sort of trap.

In the big picture, the iPhone is a HUGE product for Apple, likely to supersede the iPod in many markets in a few years. This has been in the works for years, a big bet for Apple. They wouldn't use this product to pick a fight with another big-name tech company unless they knew exactly what they were doing.

They could have called their other new product by its codename, iTV, but they instead chose Apple TV. Why the obviously contentious iPhone instead of something like Apple Phone?

I didn't see it. Personally I have no idea what to think of this. I can see the need for protecting brand names - OTOH brand names ought to be rather different than ordinary names. Putting one or two letters in front of an ordinary name is hardly worthy of protection, IMHO.

Erm .. i am sure this was on digg almost a week ago. I might do a search for it later. But it was during the time of speculation about the iPhone and the fact that Cisco already owns the trademark .... so i wasn't surprise when I saw this today

don't forget to TM iShit ;-) And for politicians, we need to especially TM iMADIPSHIT ;-)

Sorry, couldn't resist.

Dave

The last one... shouldn't that be myBeer?

It's only scary if the judge sided with Apple. Otherwise it's funny in that Apple is out of its mind.

I think it's a. That still leads me to think Apple is out of its mind.

I'd like to know what Ciscos terms were.

a) They're willing to pay Cisco a lot of money for either ownership or licence of the trademark

b) They're going to fight it in court, most probably by trying to argue all names of the form "iAnything" belong to Apple.

If it's (a), it raises the question of why they didn't do this prior to the announcement, to avoid all this unpleasant publicity.

If it's (b), then that's a very scary prospect indeed.


My guess is that it's (a). Although Apple should be very concerned bcause there's no limit to how much Cisco could demand, I think that Apple is going to throw some big money at the problem and try to make it go away. Apple could always argue that it never intended to use "iPhone"; that it was merely a codeword for their product, not the eventual product name, if negotiations with Cisco fall apart. Just a guess.

b) They're going to fight it in court, most probably by trying to argue all names of the form "iAnything" belong to Apple.

what about Novell, they have iFolder, iPrint, iManager, and the like... I don't think you can patent or claim IP on a nomenclature system.

Or, it's all planned by Apple and Cisco. Big hooplah, they settle, both companies get a lot of free advertising.

Mmm, black helicopters...

Or, it's all planned by Apple and Cisco. Big hooplah, they settle, both companies get a lot of free advertising.

Or, Cisco releases a MP3 player named iPod.

Or, Cisco releases a MP3 player named iPod.

That would be priceless. If I worked at Cisco, I'd do it just for the fun of it.

Or, it's all planned by Apple and Cisco. Big hooplah, they settle, both companies get a lot of free advertising.

Mmm, black helicopters...

Given that this news has negatively affected Apple's share price (which anyone could have predicted), I think such action would probably be illegal. Not that Steve Jobs seems to care much about the legalities of share dealing, of course.

Also, it's not like Apple need any more publicity for this thing: it was on the front of national newspapers here today, for goodness' sake. And this doesn't exactly make them look good.

Having thought about it, I think it's most likely that they expected to be sued, and will try to use the court case to extract some reasonable licensing terms out of Cisco. I don't know enough about US trademark law though to know whether a judge can force such a thing however.

Did you actually check the stock price?

Up around 15% since the iPhone announcement. Down less than 1% since the announcement that Cisco was suing.
The stock has been hardly affected at all by this news.

b) They're going to fight it in court, most probably by trying to argue all names of the form "iAnything" belong to Apple.

the only problem is that ciscos iPhone-brand dates back 2 years before the first iMac
If someone copied the "i-Brand" it's apple

the only problem is that ciscos iPhone-brand dates back 2 years before the first iMac
If someone copied the "i-Brand" it's apple

Stop, reverse.

Cisco trademark is 2000, first iMac is 1998 (iMovie is 1999, iPod and iTunes are 2001, iPhoto 2002 -- thanks, Wikipedia) and Cisco's iPhone came out a few months ago, tops, so Apple could easily make a strong case that iThings are their brand.

Still, it doesn't look great for Apple. From Steve Jobs's own mouth, the iPhone had been in development for two and a half years, not seven, and Cisco got their allegedly intelligent phone out the door first.

infogear registered "iPhone" in 1996
cisco bought infogear in 2000
linksys announced their first iPhone in late 2005 when they teamed up with skype
the first iMac was released in 1998 (thats 2 years after 1996 )

don't believe everything you find on wikipedia. most of the time it tells only half the truce

Edited 2007-01-11 03:36

Does it matter who did what when? Surely the issue is, has Apple actually tried to prohibit others using the expression iXXX on their products since 1998? If not, its going to be very difficult to argue that i-anything is an Apple trademark. Of course, if they have registered and enforced particular instances like 'iBook', 'iTune' those will be different.

"Stop, reverse.

Cisco trademark is 2000, first iMac is 1998 (iMovie is 1999, iPod and iTunes are 2001, iPhoto 2002 -- thanks, Wikipedia) and Cisco's iPhone came out a few months ago, tops, so Apple could easily make a strong case that iThings are their brand."

Actually Infogear introduced the iPhone in 1997 and Cisco bought them out in 2000 acquiring the TM.

b) They're going to fight it in court, most probably by trying to argue all names of the form "iAnything" belong to Apple.
You mean like "iDiot"?

Poor Cisco! They want a piece of a pie too, failing to produce anything people would want or even know about (re: their own iPhone).

Did you read the article? Apple is the usurper here, not Cisco.

Cisco bought the trademark when it purchased InfoGear back in 2000. Since that time, Cisco has introduced products into the market under that name and, regardless of Apple's ambitions, Cisco deserves protection by the court.

Obviously you have no idea what Cisco's market is. Besides Linksys they do not at all market to consumers. They have absolutely no reason to market to non IT people like apple does.

Unless you are trying to say that Network Engineers are not people! In which case... I must say.. that huts man!

/*Poor Cisco! They want a piece of a pie too, failing to produce anything people would want or even know about (re: their own iPhone). */

cisco does produce things that peple want like their network hardware.
apple is the one that fails to produce stuff that people would want to buy, like their mac line, nobody buys those. apple always fails to take the market share away from MS when they release a new mac os x version.

Edited 2007-01-11 06:43

Apple isn't after Microsoft they don't want all the idiots that use windows and click on anything and doesn't know anything else than to point and lick

And how do you know this?

Duh, because Apple's goal as a publicly traded company isn't to make money. They'd rather sell computers to 2% of the market rather than 96%. Stupid Microsoft... they don't even know what to do with all their money. Apple likes to keep their accounting simple.

Apple doesn't want to be Microsoft

That sound's similar to an opinion, not supporting evidence.

Yup, the iPod has a 0% market share and mac sales were down 100% last quarter. Macs are losing market share fast to xp. Mac market share is currently -234.123% and goinf further down.

FYI, Cisco is a much bigger company than Apple if measured in revenue: $28.48 billion USD vs. $19.3 billion USD. So, I guess they do produce something people would know about and want!

You know who Cisco is [ ]

Suppose you have some company ABC_1 and your company introduces some product called XYZ. Also your company now have registered the name XYZ. If some other company ABC_2 comes and takes the name XYZ and uses it for there own product. How would you feel? Don't you become angry for using your product's name?

Now that's the case of Cisco here...

"Apple probably didn't get stupid over night."

No, it took many many years. Lately they've been acting very uncharacteristic of themselves.

Philips released the CD-i. The 3DO was a completely separate console.

iFone probably wouldn't be legal as thats pretty directly trying to confuse consumers. Cisco would get to file a second lawsuit against Apple for even more damages. That would be like me releasing an operating system called Windoze.

Most likely, they reckon brand recognition trumps originality in naming, which is understandable.

There's nothing Fisher Price about it. It's simple brand recognition.

More important than an original name, just for the sake of it.

The "Apple TS2250 mobile phone" just doesn't have the same ring to it.

Edited 2007-01-11 17:08

They tried, but "Zune" was already taken.

Well fortunately for the rest of the sane world they don't give trademarks for i*. There are no wildcards in trademarks. Cisco legitimately had this one and released a product called iPhone before Apple's was even being concieved. As much as it may hurt the Apple fanboys, Apple is wrong on this one.

"Hmmmm let me see they already have iPod, iTunes, iMac, iChat, in their portfolio..."

Which were all revealed and released after the iPhone trademark was registered (in 1996).

The iPhone trademark is 11 years old