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Apple, Cisco Settle iPhone Trademark Lawsuit
A number of readers let us know that Cisco and Apple have settled the lawsuit over the use of the iPhone name for Apple's new multimedia phone. The agreement allows Apple and Cisco both to use the iPhone brand on their own products. Also, the companies said they would explore opportunities for interoperability in the areas of security, consumer and business communications. Apple still faces a suit over the name in Canada and one over its touch-screen technology in the UK.
...who were just oh-so-sure that Apple was going to get screwed, and was going to have to change the name, and were delighting in Apple supposedly being inevitably "forced" out of the name by Cisco, apparently not realizing that there was literally no way that iPhone wouldn't ultimately end up being the final name of this product:
:-)
Told you so.
Doesn't Cisco face a possible lawsuit also in Canada over the name?
The dangers of knowledge trigger emotional distress in human beings.
Wether you like it or not Apple didn't copy anybody (except from the perspective that everything is inherently copied). The design lifecycle of a product such as this is far to long for them to have copied the prada or any other new phone's design. If anything this should say something about the new current trend in cellular phones. As far as the lawsuit goes Apple is very good at weasling their way around definitions to put themselves in the right. I don't care how you look at it, but any phone that a customer has an active part in making the purchasing desicion (aka not a cheapo I need a phone model) is competing with one another. If I had a car called the Iphone and it really doesn't compete with the real cell phone, the name is misleading and shouldn't have been awarded to Apple. But I believe Cisco did the right thing, and heck they got some press and some money out of it to boot.
Apple can win this one in the long term by making the term generic. There is no public confusion over the name, nobody but the most blatant Cisco shill or eBay fraudster would actaully mix up the two products (or 3 if you count the Canadian one).
After the first (non-3g) model's lifespan is over Apple can safely trademark the "iPhone 3G", "iPhone Nano" and all other variants, protecting their products while allowing the first part of the name to become generic. Once that happens, they could tell Cisco where to stick this deal.
A pizza of radius z and thickness a has a volume of pi z z a
"Cut the apple into two halves".
-- Rastignac was here.
What if the Hokey Pokey really is what it's all about?
oh yeah, cause I'm sure Apple hadn't already started on the iPhone when the Prada was announced
seriously, even Apple couldn't pull off the iPhone in 1 month
Even though such a prototype takes more than a few months to design and thus neither Apple nor LG are likely to steal the design from each other, consider the following: Both devices use a huge touchscreen, which covers nearly the entire front of the device. What design can you rip off if your entire phone design only consists of one giant f***ing touchscreen with a speaker on top and a button underneath it? Well, the LG one has three buttons, but thats not the point ;-)
See, there is only so much design you can do with those elements and this is the most obvious layout you can think of. And since every other phone on the planet is either silver or black even the similar color is a moot point. Maybe Apple can bring out another, beefier version in silver later and call it iPhone Pro or something ;-)
I think you need to look up "fact" in a dictionary... either that or call the Prada a rip off of Apple's Newton, given that they all they have in common is that they are black cuboid electical products with touch screens.
A pizza of radius z and thickness a has a volume of pi z z a
i wonder how much Apple had to give Cisco for that name.
Per phone or just a stack of million $?
Here is the original iPhone. Infogear was purchased by Cisco in 2000, hence they inherited the iPhone name. I used to do tech support for these iPhones back in the day so I did feel some nostalgia when the name was revealed for Apple's new product. Infogear iPhone
Total Victory for Apple.
Apple gets to use the name without compensation and no one will remember Cisco's "IPhone" next year.
I guess Cisco's trademark must really have lapsed for them to have given up with nothing more than a "promise" to explore interoperability.
Apple has successfully trademarked the letter that comes just after h in the alphabet. Use of sayd letter eys prohybyted and people can face hefty fynes eyf caught do'n so. Onlyne experts recommend people to start dystancyng themselves from g whyle they're at yet.
Don't forget the NeoNode, which has been out since July 2004 (or at least version 1 has).
As for the ripping off argument. It's usually absurd. Vague similarities become emotional touch points. Yes, it's true that a lot of people say everyone rips things off from Apple but that's just utter nonsense. Can you imagine if the idea of the icon on a desktop computer or other electronic devices with GUI interfaces was under the stewardship of one company. Many companies use ideas that have already been used by others, and often improve on them (i.e. the iPhone is, at least in my judgment, an improvement on many of things the NeoNode is), or add their own flair to it. I always say, "This will only be cool and great once Apple invents it."
You only have to look at the history of automobiles to see how cross creativity and innovation in action. You don't see many people going on about how Renault invented the dual overhead cam shaft so every other car company that uses DOHC engines RIPPED OFF RENAULT!
"Other terms of the agreement are confidential" says the article. We don't know if Apple got this for free, or if they paid $4bn, half their shares and free rides in Steve Jobs' personal Jet for it.
A pizza of radius z and thickness a has a volume of pi z z a
The phone's still as expensive as a PS3, and half as functional. Since the damned thing is practically one big touch screen, you'd constantly be wiping off the smudges every time you make a call. And, as I've said before, no GSM accessibility around these parts, so it's entirely worthless to me, anyway, though even without that factor, I wouldn't buy one. Hell, you can get a decent laptop for that kind of money, and a laptop is so much more useful than this is.
Pass.
Screw the rules, I have green hair!
that's unpossible!
I was SOOOOOO worried that the two multi-billion-dollar corporations might drag on this free ad-fest for the rest of the year. Now we can go back to worrying if Vista users are secure. Huzah!
Here will be an old abusing of God's patience and the king's English.
Apple boardroom: Let's just call it iPhone, and let it go as it may. Keep blabbing with Cisco so they think we are negotiating. They don't have a case anyway.
Cisco boardroom: We have to get on the consumer bandwagon, so lets use this trademark to force Apple to help us even if we don't really have a good case. Tell the media that we are almost in agreement.
Apple boardroom: The blabbing with Cisco resulted in an agreement that basically means nothing. At least they think they have something and have backed off.
Cisco boardroom: The "explore opportunities" agreement is of course worhtless, but maybe we can fool our stockholders at least that we got a good thing going here.
"Fix it"
Actually we know it's not that big because that would *have* to be declared, being just a tad share price sensitive.
The acid test of "who won" is quite simple: in a year who will ever remember that Cisco once made a product called iPhone?
Thank you... for considering the following.
The acid test of "who won" is quite simple: in a year who will ever remember that Cisco once made a product called iPhone?
Not necessarily. Cisco may have planned for this, and by relabelling one of their products an iPhone, were probably in a better position to get a better settlement. For them the iPhone name was just an easy way to get something out of Apple.
Jumpstart the tartan drive.
...So that you morons will waste all your mod points.
It's not my fault that you have no concept of what the moderation system is for. Here's a clue: It's not there for you to editorialize the comments. That's not why it was intended, and if you're using it that way, you're contributing to the cheapening of this community. Why do you even care about Slashdot if you don't care to use it properly.
You're probably the same kind of person that checks Wikipedia and rolls back edits every time they change something that you personally wrote.
So go ahead, mod this -2 Troll. You know you want to. Waste those points so that other people with contradictory opinions can be heard without fearing that some idiot who can't express ideas with his own words will take his aggression out on them.
One thing they may have wanted from Apple, is for Apple to use Cisco/Linksys wireless technology in their systems. If Apple agreed to this then Cisco gets a lot from the deal. Looks like we will need to keep an eye out to what wireless hardware will be used in upcoming hardware.
Jumpstart the tartan drive.
Not my cup of Chaucer, but whatever flyps your swytches.
What on earth are you talking about? The only thing on OS X vaguely like Vista's "sidebar" is the dock, which comes from NeXTSTEP, and was in NeXTSTEP back when Microsoft and IBM were still fighting over OS/2.
"who were just oh-so-sure that Apple was going to get screwed,"
So you've seen the agreement then, Mr. Jobs?
Here's how it goes:
EVERYBODY rips off Apple
Apple never rips off ANYBODY
Now drink your kool-aid and bow before The Leader.
That doesn't make sense. Cisco had the iPhone trademark before Apple, and Apple knew that. If Apple didn't want Cisco to be able to make demands on them, Apple could simply have called their phone something else and avoided the whole mess.
I think Apple provoked the whole dispute for publicity reasons.
Cisco didn't relabel a product "iPhone", they purchased a company that had a product named "iPhone". Not really a master plan and I'm sure they didn't purchase a VOIP company just to get the name. If they did, settling this means a pretty poorly executed plan. Apple could have easily argued in court that the entire world calls their product iPhone. That would be hard for Cisco to fight since it's very, very true.
So rather than a cut of profits, Cisco gets to share the name, eh? Oh yeah, like when you hear "iPhone" later this spring anybody is going to be thinking of Cisco! But at least interoperability with a product that no one is going to buy, namely the Cisco iPhone, should be pretty easy to achieve. Sorry, I'm no Apple fanboy, but in this case, it appears that Apple definitely got the better part of this deal which probably means Cisco's lawyers didn't feel they had a strong case.
To the making of books there is no end, so let's get started
Cisco doesn't make the hardware components that go into their VoIP devices or anyone else's. They do sell VoIP phones, both in the consumer market as Linksys and in the enterprise market. But really Cisco regards VoIP as just another application that increases demand for their real products, the big-iron infrastructure needed to support it all. Cisco wants to turn the iPhone into an application on top of Cisco's infrastructure. It seems likely that future versions of the iPhone will have VoIP support, so Cisco wants to ensure that the iPhone will be compatible with their infrastructure. The scenario is that you can walk into work, connect to the corporate WiFi and use the iPhone like your desk phone. Certain Nokia phones have apparently had this ability for about a year. More information here.
The "Sidebar" feature in that alpha was nothing like the Sidebar that eventually wound up in Vista or any feature in Mac OS X.
Indexed desktop search first appeared on Mac's in Mac OS 8.5 via Sherlock
Try again.
A number of posts here are alluding to Apple's payment of large amounts of money to Cisco. They argue that Apple "lost" because of this large payment of money, in one post up to $4 billion. My question is:
What money? How much money? How do you know? Where's the evidence?
Or are you just basing your arguments on idle speculation of what you wish would have happened?
How about a moderation of -1 pedantic.
This is just a theory, a possibility. I don't insist upon it. I'm just trying to fit what we know into the framework without idle speculation that Apple paid money to Cisco, which I doubt. Arguments that they did are based on thin air. We do not know.
What if Apple used the Tom Sawyer Gambit?
Apple knows, of course, that Cisco has "the trademark" for iPhone, but it isn't a very good one. Why not? Because Cisco inherited it and did nothing with it. I suspect it was a "TM" trademark, not a "R-circle" trademark. A "TM" trademark is provisional. Once you get it you must demonstrate that you are serious by USING that trademark in INTERSTATE COMMERCE. If you do, then after a certain number of years you get on the coveted "register," (hence "R" with a circle around it.) Once you are on "the register" with your trademark, it's a lot harder to unseat you from owning that mark. But it's a "you use or you lose" proposition. Until you get there, you are vulnerable to losing the mark altogether. Apple knows this, too.
Apple would also like very much to be completely interoperable with Cisco equipment. Why? Because Cisco dominates the corporate market big time, and has a huge segment of the consumer market with LinkSys. But for one reason or another, Cisco isn't really that interested in Apple. Their focus is elsewhere, though VOIP is big, they just aren't thinking Apple is a potential player here. Apple can strut all it wants, but Cisco is looking the other way thinking Apple is just a toy.
Hmm, how to get Cisco's attention? Dangle "iPhone" in front of them like a carrot on a stick. "Hey, guys! I got your iPhone. Come chase me!" Big announcement, slap it up there in lights, and Apple runs like hell, but not too fast.
Bang!
Cisco bites the Apple, just like Eve, and sues. Publicity for both parties, bad or good, just spell my name right. Apple grins, begins negotiations. You'll notice it never got to court. "Hey, Cisco! You didn't use the mark. Your loss is our gain, but hey. We'll cooperate. How bout if we agree to partner up with you to make sure iPhone is compatible with all your, you know, stuff? We're gonna sell a billion of these things. Wanna be part of it? Oh, and you can keep using the mark, of course, if you have a product to stick it on, (snicker)."
So here's Apple, like Tom Sawyer, munching on a Red Delicious while his frie..., er, business partners, paint the fence for him.
How about a moderation of -1 pedantic.
Apple also likely knew that any claim Cisco had on the trademark would be tenuous, at best. They also have this other product with a "i" prefix - maybe you've heard of it - so perhaps they wanted to associate their new iPhone with the strongly established iPod brand. Do you really think Apple needed to resort to a trademark dispute to drum up interest???
Obvious exits are NORTH, SOUTH, and DENNIS.
When I mentioned wireless, I was not thinking phones. I was thinking of Apple's Airport range of wireless products. Remember these are all rebranded with the Apple name and packaged in the Apple look. If Cisco could get Apple as a customer for these, then its an extra revenue stream for them - this is worth more than any money Apple would give them in a single settlement.
Jumpstart the tartan drive.
Whaaa? That seems a bit unlikely. Cisco sells directly competing products as Linksys. Yes, they'd make some money by rebranding Linksys products in Apple's name, but they'd make more money if they didn't have to give Apple a share.
That being said, this isn't really about the home user market -- that's peanuts to Cisco. Consumer devices have long been a commodity market so they don't get the same profit margins that they do on enterprise and infrastructure equipment. Cisco bought Scientific Atlanta and Linksys not as profit centers in themselves, but rather as the end points to a much larger IP-based network running Cisco equipment. They don't care about selling wireless routers for 35 bucks a pop, they want to sell the backbone equipment for thousands of dollars with a huge profit margin.
Actually, they did both. They bought a company, lets its trademarks lapse, then re-labeled an existing product "iPhone" (on the outside of the shrink wrap box, no less) to try and scam money out of Apple.
Do you not see some potential synergy in this announcement. Yes, Cisco's trademark claim on iPhone was weak, but Cisco is desperately interested in phones. Cisco is desperately interested in VoIP. Cisco has been trying to make a combination cell/wifi phone for years. The market for such a device would be massive. Cisco has a large presence in corporate phone systems, but nothing in cell phones. The cell phone companies don't seem to want to have anything to do with the corporate market (which knows the difference between a phone system and a bunch of phones).
Could Apple and Cisco finally put together a single device that would make VoIP calls when a wifi connection was available, cell calls when that was the only connection available, AND work on a corporate phone system/Cisco Call Manager? Cisco has the networking capabilities, call manager, VoIP experience -- Apple seems to have some pull with at least one cell company.
Everybody wins... except the current cell companies... anyone feel bad about that???
http://blogs.zdnet.com/Burnette/?p=236
Technically, Cisco had legal control of the name, but in fact, all they did throughout the product cycle was do the bare legal requirements at the last minute, over and over. The fact is, in their filings, they showed the box of an old Skype phone they had brought out a year before, but had not called that. The picture on the cover is a mockup, and you can plainly see that "iPhone" is pasted on the box. They later, in November or December 2006, at the last possible moment, put out the same old unit, in a box that actually said, "iPhone" at last. Apparently, the pdf manual on the website didn't call it that. Looks like a purely legal rush to me, and hardly a real necessity to use that name on an important product. It looks, yawn, like a cordless phone from one of a dozen manufacturers, and as a Skype phone it's scarcely unique. I don't know how important in the law, but in the real world it sure is. They were actually willing to rebrand something just to farm for dollars, no?
Now, lemme tell you about secret agreements. If Apple had paid a ton of money, you'd be hearing semi-official rumors by now. Sort of like, "See how much our lawyers gouged out of them?" They would be officially denied, but insiders would have a good idea. The lack of even inflated figures, that the PR department denies after the rumor has had a chance to percolate, kind of says, "They caved" to me.
Whatever a patent attorney would say about this case, it's clear that either through personal animosity, or the desire to make a buck, Cisco put up a legal roadblock. If it was important to the Cisco brand, they would have put up a huge fight, and Apple probably would have had no choice but to back off. Possession being 9/10 of the law and all. But it's not important to Cisco, they were just playing games.
The rumors of the "iPhone" were never confirmed by Apple, but everybody used it. It didn't officially exist and it was already branded. I'm sure they had a name in reserve, if Cisco wanted to play hardball, and make the prospective of maybe losing the case in a couple of years and having to pay Cisco x dollars per phone, or shut down the iPhone until it could be renamed, or some other disaster. But Cisco just had bluster.
Now, why is it that Linksys routers are unique for their total lack of Mac support? I mean, you can use them, but you have to dust off the geek to get him going.
Finally took them long enough. Smart move on Apple to just settle.