Cisco and Apple talking about iPhone again

By Stan Beer
Friday, 02 February 2007 02:01

IT Industry - Market

Apple, the company busily threatening little technology companies around the world who dare to use the word pod as part of their products' names, is back at the negotiating table with Cisco over its use of the iPhone name, a trademark held by Cisco for years.

Apple believes that iPhone is a generic name and therefore Cisco should not have exclusive claim to it and that there would not be any confusion between its new combination mobile phone and iPod and Cisco's VoIP phone. Cisco, which owns rights to the name in the US, begs to differ.

"Cisco entered into negotiations with Apple in good faith after Apple repeatedly asked permission to use Cisco’s iPhone name," Mark Chandler, senior vice president and general counsel, Cisco, said earlier this month. "There is no doubt that Apple’s new phone is very exciting, but they should not be using our trademark without our permission."

Both Apple and Cisco had reportedly still not finalized discussions they were holding over use of the name in the US, where Apple will launch its iPhone in the first half of this year, when CEO Steve Jobs announced the new Apple product's name at the Macworld Expo.

Cisco is reportedly not seeking monetary compensation from Apple but wants to develop an interoperability agreement between its products, something Apple has opposed up until now.

Although Cisco holds a US trademark for iPhone relating to "computer hardware and software for providing integrated telephone communication with computerized global information networks", the trademark is held by Apple in other jurisdictions.

Securipod Ltd a UK company is due to release its first product  under the brand name ‘biouno’ the world’s first biometric wallet to help combat Id theft and credit card fraud.  At the eleventh hour Apple opposed the trademark application for ‘Securipod’ on the grounds that consumers could be confused, because ‘securipod’ includes the letters ‘pod’ and ‘ipod’.

According to Securipod, Apple seemed to contradict themselves when referring to the iPhone trademark by claiming that the word iPhone should be considered generic and therefore should be able to be used by both Apple and Cisco without confusion.

Securipod directors were bemused as to how a biometric wallet could be confused with an iPod mp3 player, but an Apple iPhone could not be confused with Cisco iPhone.