Three years after being sued by Cisco Systems for give its iPhone the same name as a Cisco product , Apple has take another page from the Cisco playbook , renaming its iPhone operating system , iOS .
Apple CEO Steve Jobs unveiled the fresh iOS name at his troupe ’s Worldwide Developers Conference in San Francisco Monday . He tell that it did n’t make sense to call the operating system the iPhone OS , render that it is also being used to power things that are n’t iPhones , namely the iPad and iPod touch .
iOS just befall to be the same trademarked acronym that Cisco utilize for its Internetwork Operating System , and that could have spelled bother for Apple . Cisco litigate Apple in January 2007 , after Apple announced the iPhone , arrogate that it had antecedently register iPhone as a trademark for its IP - enabled telephones .
However , this time around there wo n’t be any lawsuit bring by the networking giant . That ’s because Apple and Cisco came to terminus ahead of Monday ’s proclamation .
“ Cisco has match to license the Io trademark to Apple for exercise as the name of Apple ’s operating system of rules for iPhone , iPod pinch and iPad , ” said Cisco spokeswoman Kristin Carvell . “ The license is for economic consumption of the earmark only and not for any engineering . ”
Carvell declined to provide the terms of the licensing agreement or to render more information on the deal . Apple did not answer to a asking for commentary .
Apple is look at a conservative approach by certify the name from Cisco , whose routers and switches are quite dissimilar from Apple ’s product , said Michael Atkins , an cerebral property collaborator with the Graham & Dunn law house in Seattle . “ I do n’t know that an operating scheme for the iPad and the new iPhone would go down within the description of good that Cisco had explain in its [ trademark ] registration , ” he tell . “ I conceive it ’s more of an effort to quash a engagement down the road . ”
Cisco IOS was n’t the only earmark Apple licensed Monday . It is also buy the name FaceTime — used for Apple ’s new picture schmooze app — from a social networking certificate software company . FaceTime , the security fellowship , willchange its name over the next few months , altogether transfer the name to Apple .
Steve Lawson of IDG News Service in San Francisco add to this report .
