iPhone trademark fight settled
Updated on 22 February 2007
Cisco Systems and Apple have settled the trademark-infringement lawsuit that threatened to derail Apple's use of the "iPhone" name for its much-hyped new iPod-cellular phone gadget.
Cisco's Linksys division has been using the trademark since last spring on a line of phones that make free long-distance calls over the Internet using a technology called Voice over Internet Protocol, or VoIP.
Apple will be allowed to use the name for its sleek new multimedia device in exchange for exploring wide-ranging "interoperability" between the companies' products in the areas of security, consumer and business communications.
One possibility could be the creation of a Linksys device that users call into to record podcasts that are then automatically uploaded to iTunes, which would make the creation and dissemination of such programs easier.
No other details of the agreement were released, and representatives from both companies declined to comment beyond their short joint statement.
The companies both said they would dismiss any pending legal actions regarding the trademark.
The showdown between the Silicon Valley tech heavyweights erupted last month when Cisco sued Apple in San Francisco federal court, claiming that Apple's use of the iPhone name constituted a "wilful and malicious" violation of a trademark that Cisco has owned since 2000.
The lawsuit was filed a day after Apple chief executive Steve Jobs unveiled his own company's iPhone, a multimedia device that operates over the cellular network instead of the Internet.
Apple initially called the lawsuit "silly" and argued that it was entitled to use the name because the phones operate over different networks and would not compete with each other.
Cisco maintained that in an era of "convergence" -- where increasingly intelligent networks and devices can handle a variety of different types of voice, video, data and other transmissions -- the two companies' phones could eventually take on different features and wind up competing head-to-head.
