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Cisco VP Explains Lawsuit Against Apple
Dekortage writes "The day after Apple announced its iPhone, Cisco sued over the name. Mark Chandler, Cisco's SVP and General Counsel, has posted an explanation of the suit on his blog: 'For the last few weeks, we have been in serious discussions with Apple over how the two companies could work together and share the iPhone trademark. ...I was surprised and disappointed when Apple decided to go ahead and announce their new product with our trademarked name without reaching an agreement. It was essentially the equivalent of "we're too busy."' What did Cisco want? '[We] wanted an open approach. We hoped our products could interoperate in the future.'" Another reader wrote to mention that already, Cisco's trademark might be in trouble in Europe.
Steve Jobs isn't an 'Enemy' of open source. He doesn't activly fight against open source.
No third party apps* was so he could get a carrier.
*I think we all know people will find a way around this.
He is certianly NOT my hero. There are many thing to ream him on, this really isn't one of them.
It is interesting that this conflicts with an earlier memo from Cisco stating that all they needed was to wrap up some minor details of an agreement.
I don't know what Jobs is thinking, I do know he isn't stupid.
The Kruger Dunning explains most post on
One major difference. Cisco legally owns the name. Apple does not. So Cisco released a product, using a trademark that they own. Apple on the other hand, decided screw it, and released a product using somebody else's trademark. I really hope Apple gets there ass handed to them in court. It's arrogance and disrespect for the law. The same law that Apple relies on with their iPod empire.
Even if the negotiations were "fair", Cisco still had the legal right to release the product under the iPhone name, whereas Apple does not.
-dave
/., where "Apple and Google provide Iran with nukes" will be refuted with "But Microsoft is a convicted monopolist"
Cringely suspects that the whole thing is a marketing stunt. They had 2 major announcements at mac world:
1) iPhone
2) iTV
They both had trademark issues. iPhone was with Cisco and iTV was with eyeTV. They changed the iTV to Apple TV. They could have just as easily changed iPhone to Apple Phone or something else. Why didn't they do it? Cringely writes that he thinks it's for its marketing value. It guarantees that iPhone and the lawsuit will stay in the news long enough for everyone in the country to have heard of it. I don't know if this is the real reason but it does fit the facts. I wonder if the cost of a lawsuit is less than a TON of commercials and other advertisements.
www.joshferguson.org
The reason that is significant is that Cisco hasn't defended its trademark in the past. There are several products named iPhone out there. Couple that with the fact that Cisco hasn't used the iPhone name since they purchased it in 2000 and it seems they may be in some legal trouble.