Cisco VP Explains Lawsuit Against Apple

Posted by Zonk on Friday January 12, 2007 @04:52AM from the all-very-rational dept.

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.

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Openness and Cisco? by jsailor · 2007-01-12 05:07 · Score: 1, Offtopic

Open like: (E)IGRP, HSRP, CDP, ISL, BGP hacks, and many, many other protocols and technologies.
Please, Cisco was looking to use the trademark as a tool for wedging their way further into the consumer market segment and gaining some form of inside track on a device that Apple wants to keep third parties off of. Combination WiFi and cellular phones are somewhat hot in the minds of some corporations as are many forms of communications "convergence".

Pretending that Cisco is open is like pretending that Microsoft is an innovator. There are shreds of evidence to support the claim, but by and large, it's untrue.