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Cisco Sues Apple Over iPhone Trademark
lucabrasi999 writes "It appears that Apple may be running out of items that they can prefix with the letter "i". Cisco is suing Apple over trademark infringement. Cisco claims to own the rights to the "iPhone" trademark since they purchased Infogear in 2000. Infogear filed for the rights to the trademark in 1996."
The trademark information on the US Patent and Trademark Office's site
I've been curious about this one since yesterday. Apple doesn't seem to have any legal right to the name, but could they really call it anything else?
Actually, there was a whole dot-com phenomena of putting "i" in front of things too. iDefense Labs is the one that springs immediately to mind as a survivor from that era.
"I'd rather be a lightning rod than a seismometer." -Ken Kesey
So a trademark aquired in 1996 is because Apple decided to trademark the iMac in 1998? That's some interesting time traveling device that Jobs & Co. has. Where can I get an iTimeMachine?
But seriously, the dot com boom and rise of general internet awareness sparked a lot of i-names. e-names were more popular initially, but when people couldn't register e-device, the next thing they'd try was i-device. While Apple's uses may be the most memorable (because of success and their incredible ability to get free marketing from every news source on the planet), it wasn't the first and wasn't the trend setter either.
*** File this myth along side of Apple being the first to have USB or 64bit desktop machines.
I'm out of my mind right now, but feel free to leave a message.....
Why would he sue Apple? He sits on the board.
Internet. The original iMac (the first iThing) was touted as being easy to connect to the internet.
Stupidity is like nuclear power, it can be used for good or evil. And you don't want to get any on you.
I googled the lawyer who filed this for Cisco/linksys, scroll down for her list of clients!
Actually this post is wrong: the recent use of "iPhone" dates back over a year. There's a Linksys iPhone that was available as early as November 2005. (Linksys is owned by Cisco.)
It still could have been named with a thought to creating a conflict with a potential Apple name, but that's at least no longer obviously the case.
Well, called Cisco - and they are upset about phonetic infringement!
Sysco had the name 'sis-co' 14 years Before Cisco attempted to take the name 'sis-co'.
Hell, if Apple music company in the UK can attack Apple computer (no relation) over the word *apple*
(prior art 4.1 million years ago - fruit evolution) ,
it seems that Sysco would have a very good case against Cisco for name dilution.
Imagine saying 'I need to pick up the new Cisco router and install it over at the Sysco Warehouse.'
Confusing?
Back in early 1995 a company called Vocaltec released a program called "Iphone" for Windows 3.1 that allowed PC to PC voice calls. It used EFnet IRC channels for the handshake which pissed off a lot of server administrators because the program couldn't function as a standard IRC client. The only thing an iphone user could do was connect to an IRC server, join #iphone channels and initiate calls with other iphone clients.
I believe that a trademark holder must vigorously defend their trademark from infringement, otherwise they can lose it.
It's still possible that Apple/Cisco are in final talks over details of the trademark "iPhone" (both "playing nice"/with the assumption that a final deal will be reached), but the Cisco lawyers are just doing what they are supposed to do - even though they have no intention of suing Apple over it.
Just a thought.
GP sure was, but he referenced it correctly...
Commentary from Mark Chandler, Cisco's SVP and General Counsel, on Apple's infringement of Cisco's iPhone trademark:
"Cisco owns the iPhone trademark. We have since 2000, when we bought a company called Infogear Technology, which had developed a product that combined web access and telephone. Infogear's registrations for the mark date to 1996, before iMacs and iPods were even glimmers in Apple's eye. We shipped and/or supported that iPhone product for years. We have been shipping new, updated iPhone products since last spring, and had a formal launch late last year. Apple knows this; they approached us about the iPhone trademark as far back as 2001, and have approached us several times over the past year."