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.

Comments

Re:Openness and Cisco?

[drinkypoo]

Several of the protocols you're bitching about have equivilant open standard alternatives that are fully supported in IOS. HSRP -> VRRP; isl -> 802.1q

That is not a defense. If there are equivalent open standard alternatives, why did they feel the need to create closed ones? Answer: Because they want to institute lock-in. It's just that simple.