Cisco Systems is litigate Apple to prevent it from using the name iPhone for the young smartphone Apple acquaint Tuesday at the Macworld Conference & Expo in San Francisco .
Cisco filed a cause in Federal District Court for Northern California seeking an injunction against Apple using the name .
The name iPhone is a registered stylemark of Linksys , a division of Cisco . Linksys picked up the iPhone name when it bought a company called Infogear Technology Corp. in 2000 . Cisco ’s iPhones are telephone French telephone designed for use of goods and services on a VOIP ( articulation over Internet Protocol ) electronic web .
The iPhone has proved to be the most talked - about product at this year ’s Expo , and its positive response has charge Apple ’s stock surging over the preceding two days . The company ’s breed closed at $ 97 Wednesday , up nearly 5 percentage for the Clarence Shepard Day Jr. .
Apple and Cisco have been in talks for about two years over Apple ’s desire to certify the iPhone trademark , said Cisco spokesman John Noh . When Apple CEO Steve Jobs introduced the iPhone Tuesday at Expo , Cisco had not yet received a sign trademark licensing agreement from Apple , even though the two companies had been negotiating terms as recently as Monday Nox .
“ Because they have been negotiating with us on licence the hallmark all this time , Apple is acknowledging that we own the name , ” said Noh .
“ Cisco introduce into negotiations with Apple in well faith after Apple repeatedly call for permission to expend Cisco ’s iPhone name , ’ said Mark Chandler , senior vice president and general counsel for Cisco .
’ Today ’s iPhone is not tomorrow ’s iPhone . The potential for convergence of the home phone , cellphone headphone , piece of work headphone and PC is limitless , which is why it is so important for us to protect our brand , ” Chandler say .
An Apple executive director toldPC World magazinethat because the Cisco iPhone is a VOIP phone and the Apple iPhone is a jail cell phone , Apple is not in violation of Cisco ’s earmark . “ They ’re different products , ” said Greg Joswiak , Apple ’s frailty president of worldwide iPod marketing . The iPhone also includes an iPod medicine player .
But if Apple was in talks with Cisco to license the iPhone trademark , it would be “ a dangerous move ” for Apple to come out using the iPhone name anyway , said trademark lawyer Allonn Levy of jurisprudence business firm Hopkins & Carley in San Jose , Calif. “ It could be seen as intentional infringement . ”
levy en masse says it ’s potential that Apple could argue that Cisco had not bring in any iPhone products until last summer and that Apple would consider the name uncommitted . But he also said Cisco may have filed the lawsuit in social club to pressure Apple into signing the hallmark licensing agreement the two companies had been negotiating .
Neither Levy nor his firm correspond Cisco or Apple .
