Apple does it again
Rating: Another long and winding road
By Annie Turner
Well, you could certainly never accuse Apple of not picking on someone its own size, if anything it goes the other way. The company formerly known as Apple Computer (now just Apple to reflect Steve Jobs’ desire to be a big player in consumer electronics of all stripes) had a long legal battle with the record label Apple (set up by The Beatles) over the erstwhile computer company allegedly pinching its brand name. Observers reckon that the use of a Beatles’ track at the iPhone launch on Tuesday suggests that the legal twisting and shouting is over and some agreement has been reached.
Now Cisco, which has a long record of fighting tooth and nail to protect its intellectual property, has just filed a lawsuit in Northern California. It wants to obtain an injunction that will prevent Apple using iPhone, which is a registered trademark of Linksys, one of Cisco’s business units. Linksys came into the name when it bought InfoGear way back in 2000. Cisco uses iPhone to describe its VoIP phones.
Apparently the two have been in negotiation for Apple to license the trademark from Cisco. Clearly they couldn’t agree terms. Now Cisco is arguing that Apple obviously recognises its ownership of the trademark or it wouldn’t have been in negotiation, while Apple is suggesting that its use of iPhone doesn’t infringe on Cisco’s rights because a mobile phone is an entirely different proposition from a VoIP phone – except, presumably, when a mobile phone is used to run Skype?!
As Apple’s shares rose by 5% after the iPhone was launched – I can’t think of any parallel in any other industry off the top of my head – maybe the timing of the lawsuit is just meant to up the ante and act as an inducement for Apple to sign the trademark licensing agreement? Perhaps Apple should have known better?
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