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Cisco Lost Rights to iPhone Trademark Last Year?
An anonymous reader writes "An investigation into the ongoing trademark dispute between Cisco and Apple over the name "iPhone" appears to show that Cisco does not own the mark as claimed in their recent lawsuit. This is based on publicly available information from the US Patent and Trademark office, as well as public reviews of Cisco products over the past year. The trademark was apparently abandoned in late 2005/early 2006 because Cisco was not using it."
iKnow that
--Steve
Cisco should just rebrand their iPhone product line and call them Apple Phones.
This guy's the limit!
Hmmm, this reminds me of those stories that come up from time to time about some big corporation forgetting to renew their domain names. If the outcome of the trademark dispute comes down to this, it will argue strongly for paying attention to the little details. In any case, you can bet corporate lawyers all over the U.S. are going to be checking their trademark papers this weekend!
To the making of books there is no end, so let's get started
Cisco on brink of losing iPhone name in Europe
I had to read TFA twice just to be sure that it was actually about the trademark in the US, not Europe.
This is definitely turning out to be a crazy situation. I agree with TFA that this is probably why Apple didn't sign the contract with Cisco after all.
#naabhaprzrag, #sverubfr-000, #agi-fcbafberq, negvpyr[pynff*=' negvpyr-ary-'] { qvfcynl: abar !vzcbegnag; }
Or do the?
6 455
http://www.theinquirer.net/default.aspx?article=3
The existence of the iTimeMachine. Doc Brown's gonna shit.
This is yet another flagrant incursion into history and unforgivable mussing of the timeline by Steve Jobs, a monster whose rampage will never end until our hard-working scientists develop a weapon that can pierce his infamous Reality Distortion Field. Myself, I suggest realigning the Bussard collectors to emit anti-neutrinos.
These stories are free but worth money.
I am pretty sure this means jack. Anybody claiming the use of a trademark receives protection with or without registration. Registration just gets you immediate action in the courts preventing apple from selling anything without hearing from apple. It also gives you the right to put TM next to the logo. If they were using it and had obvious intentions to reuse it then they are likely safe in the trademark and the registration, no matter what reason they are reusing it. The Europe one is more interesting as they have protocols to fight trademarks, but here it doesn't matter.
That is one reason why trademark squatting can somewhat work here such as that guy who owns 'stealth'. Paying is usually easier than fighting over here, and trying to get a judge to overturn a trademark may be impossible no matter how bad the situation.
I did a trademark search on uspto.gov, and it appeared to me that Cisco's iPhone trademark is listed as "LIVE", not "DEAD". IANAL, 'tis true. But we are talking about a ZDNet story, so I'm auto-skeptical.
To successfully defend a trademark, you have to show you've been consistently using it for years. Cisco couldn't do that - they had to stick a sticker on the outside of a shrink-wrap of another package. Do you not think if they actually *had* a product called the iPhone, they'd have taken a photo of that ?
Score one for the fruit company...
Simon.
Physicists get Hadrons!
Laws should be applied equally to all, regardless of who it is. Politicians. Cops. Firemen. Doctors. Corporations. Blacks. Whites. etc.
The trademark laws are fair here. Sticking a label onto shrinkwrap is not a) showing use for the past 5 years CONTINUOUSLY as the law requires, b) shows any evidence this was "use" of a trademark. Use being something the public saw when purchasing the product; they didn't.
Indeed, it seems misleading, even fraudulent, what Cisco did; they pretended that this was evidence of continuous use, public use? Please. I never heard of iphone until December and I've been looking at VOIP gear off and on for the past 6 months.
Fanboys? Sure. I used to be a Mac fanboy, back in the 68k and early PPC days. No longer. I (horrible, I know) like XP more than I like MacOS, although I dislike MS more than Apple. I have no plans to buy the crippled Apple phone/iphone either, unless Cingular has some whopping cheap plans (like $60 a month for 1000+ minutes and unlimited EDGE).
If this checks out, Youch! Everyone was wondering what was behind Apple so brazenly using the iPhone trademark. Cringely wrote a whole piece on it http://pbs.org/cringely but no one guessed something as simple as this!
Memo to self: Don't play Poker with Steve Jobs.
I RTFA and thought the commentary looked familiar: http://apple.slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=216560&c id=17578608
Maybe this is why apple didn't come out with an iPhone before. They were waiting to see if they would let the trademark lapse.
In the words of bugs bunny: How now brown cow?
The fickle commentaries crack me up. First it was WTF was Apple thinking? Then it was Cisco is in the right, Apple is wrong / evil / brazen. How stupid could they be. They're gonna have to rename it to @Phone. Blah blah blah.
Did anyone honestly think Apple would name their product the iPhone, full well knowing that Cisco had the trademark unless they were completely confident that it was both A) worth the legal headache and B) that they have a very good case and therefor chance of triumphing in this dispute?
Kiteboarding Gear Mention slashdot and get 10% off!
iPhone is now a featured product on Cisco's Website. I don't know if it was there before the iPhone was announced or before this trademark non-usage news came out, but surely it's related with Apple's iPhone.
The problem is that the product that bore the "iPhone" label in the declaration (Linksys CIT200) hadn't ever been associated with that name, so it seems to me that the sticker was an attempt to pull a fast one on the USPTO by representing the trademark as being actively used when in fact it wasn't and hadn't been for six years. The CIT200 was finally rebranded "iPhone" last month, but that was seven months after the declaration was filed and more than a year after the declaration had originally been due, and almost certainly after Cisco was aware of Apple's intentions.
IMHO Cisco fumbled badly, and they're desperately trying to recover.
Please stand clear of the doors, por favor mantenganse alejado de las puertas
Cisco regiters trademark.
Cisco files Delcaration of Use, with "under penalty of perjury" affidavit stating they are using the name.
Now it sounds like everything will hinge on the following:
AT a former FA:
2001 - 2006: Cisco continues servicing and providing technical support for the iPhone
So internal documentation may/probably shows continuous use of iPhone in regards to the support of an existing product.
Either
(A) the trademark is shown to be valid, as internal documents support the continued use of the trademark for support purposes OR
(B) they don't have the documentation, or it is deemed invalid, in which case whomever signed the extension is clearly guilty of perjury and should be prosecuted to the fullest extent of the law.
In my opinion, you can't have it both ways - the tradmark is valid and the signer is ok, or the trademark is invalid and the signer goes to jail. There is no middle ground.
Now, in other thoughts on the matter:
(1) If the trademark is up for grabs, and Cisco has an iPhone product on the market which pre-dates the Apple cellular product, don't they still have "dibs" on the name? Can't they re-file for the trademark, and presumably be first in line because of an actual shipping product?
(2) Can Chevy come out with their new "Fairlane" model next year, since Ford clearly is not producing a Fairlane and haven't for more than 7 years? If Ford claims to keep it by offering parts and service for the Fairlane, wouldn't that bolster the case For Cisco, which has supported "their" iPhone product with (at least) service for the last 6 years?
Is it just my observation, or are there way too many stupid people in the world?
Y'know, seeing as how it's an Apple product, they can rebrand the whole of their catalog (usher in the new era of Apple Inc). That way you can own aMac and aPhone and aServer with aWirelessLAN. Of course, you could also get aLife...
-BA
Lawyers are hired guns, but they are not the gunmen, their clients are. When someone walks into a lawyer's office with a complaint (or brings one to the lawyers on staff, if it's a big company), they will look to see if there is ANY amount of legal merit and, if so, begin to work on the case. Their job isn't to filter cases by how ridiculous they are, it's to filter cases without any legal merit. If you were Cisco, wouldn't you at least TRY to save your trademark? I think so.
This is just some bloggers, not a legal opinion, even if it's from a lawyer.
Here's a demonstration that Cisco was continuously using the trademark: the support web site for the iPhone, as archived at archive.org. "With InfoGear recently being acquired by Cisco Systems, there is currently no change to your iPhone coverage. We hope you continue to enjoy using your iPhone, and we thank you for your business. So, even if Cisco wasn't selling new units, they were still supporting the old ones. That page has been archived every year since 2000, so that's a form of continuous use.
There's an active user base. The University of Florida went iPhone. There's a description of their configuration here. They have a VoIP infrastructure with three Cisco CallManagers, two Cisco 6608 VoIP gateways, a Cisco Unity voice mail system, and many Cisco IP telephones, some of which are iPhone units, on desktops. The University of Pennsylvania also went iPhone. There are probably corporate installations too, but they tend not to publish their phone instructions on the public web. Those installations have to be supported, which is something Cisco does, and gets paid for. Cisco is in the network infrastructure business, after all.
As long as there's support, and support-related revenue, the trademark is clearly in use.
1. Unclear, unjustified war in a sovereign nation - Check.
2. National obsession with dance at the expense of expanded consciousness - Check.
3. Horrific fashion - Check.
4. Youth culture co-opted by advertising - Check.
5. Government stomping all over personal liberty - Check.
Sorry, dude, you're too late. The Seventies are back in force.
In fact, in the UIS at least you can use "TM" from when you begin the claim, you can use "R" once it's actually registered.
"Win treats sysadmins better than users. Mac treats users better than sysadmins. Linux treats everyone like sysadmins."
I certainly do hope to see the iPhone become a better platform for third party apps eventually, but even with nothing else, I can see ditching my Treo when it comes out. And I'm hoping that the few third party apps I do use on the Treo do make their way to the iPhone, one way or the other..... would love to have Salling Clicker on it, for example.
Actually, the other big thing I use my Treo for is as a host for TomTom navigator, but I could probably see giving that up to and just getting a physical TomTom device instead.
IANAL but... someone wrote on slashdot (and I'm trying to find it) who was a lawyer concerning this exact case. The facts I remember were that yes Cisco missed out on the trademark re-registration (or whatever it's called) last year, but those who do are given a 6 month grace period past that point in which to submit their application. Cisco did this approximately 2 months later (2 months into the 6 month period)
Some other thing as well about the use of the trademark where Cisco submitted box art for an upcoming product (possible fraudulent?)
I'm not too on-to-it with the facts. Still trying to find the source comment...
EUREKA! I've got it. Thanks jmbehmke1 for all the info!
My Mommy says smoking kills. Oh, is your Mommy a doctor? No. A scientific researcher of some kind? No. Well then sh