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.

Copy or not

[Shnyzx]

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.

Re:First move to making it generic?

[Anonymous Coward]

Yeah, brilliant idea. Portable digital music makers should do the same thing with the iPod name. After all only a blatant Apple shill would actually mix up the various iPods from different manufacturers. Right?

Or is trademark theft only cool when Apple does it?

They call that...

[Rastignac]

"Cut the apple into two halves".

Re:Ripped Off Name Problem Fixed...

[bomanbot]

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 ;-)

Re:Copy or not

[Jeremy_Bee]

Also worth noting that the link to the alpha site mentions nothing of integrated desktop search at all. Even if it did, merely *saying* in 2002 that you are going to do this cool search thingie is not at all like actually designing and creating one.

Re:To all those people...

[mrchaotica]

Of course Apple doesn't own the letter "i," but it has used "i[Foo]" enough in the past that it's unreasonable to think that another company in the computer/consumer electronics industry could have an exclusive claim to any "i[Foo]" type name. I mean, perhaps you can argue that Apple shouldn't be able to prevent someone else from using such a name (which it's never tried to do anyway), but you can't reasonably argue that someone else should be able to prevent Apple from using that name. I mean, iPhone is just a continuation of the series "iMac," "iBook," "iPod," "iTunes," "iLife," "iWork," "iSync," etc. that Apple started in 1999 (or earlier?). What did Cisco have that was named "i[Foo]" in 1999? Nothing, that's what -- and that's exactly why Apple has a stronger claim to the name "iPhone."