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Technology Stocks : Apple Inc. -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: Mick Mørmøny who wrote (60559)	1/10/2007 10:09:43 PM
From: Mick Mørmøny	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 213186

Cisco Sues Apple: Do They Have an iPhone Case? "You know, of course, that this means war." —Bugs Bunny And now the iPhone name saga goes Looney Tunes. Cisco (CSCO) has sued Apple (AAPL) for trademark infringement over the iPhone. Cisco's claim: InfoGear, a company which it bought in 2000, had registered the trademark back in 1993. Apple's apparent response: Yes, but your trademark doesn't apply to our cell phone. This is a tough one: Cisco's iPhone trademark is an expansive one, covering "communications terminals ... providing integrated telephone, data communications and personal computer functions." Sounds like an Apple iPhone to me. But will Cisco's trademark stand up in court? That's the question. Certainly, the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office says Cisco owns the trademark. Curtis Smolar, managing partner of Bay Capital Legal Group, an intellectual-property expert and friend of mine, tells me that Cisco's case is straightforward: They own the trademark, And Apple's violating it. But Apple may be able to mount several defenses, says Smolar, who's done licensing and other legal work for Miramax, Broadway Video, and PayPal, among others. "The first question is whether it's generic," says Smolar. "There is an argument that any technology company that wants to have an Internet-based phone might call it 'iPhone. The second argument is similar -- that 'iPhone' is descriptive, simply describing what it is, an Internet-based phone." And what about the "Kleenex" issue, I asked? "That's the third argument," says Smolar. "That it's not protected because it's fallen into common usage. That's why Xerox fought so vigorously to keep people from calling photocopies 'xeroxes.'" While Cisco is now taking action by suing Apple, Cisco's predecessor, InfoGear, may not have policed it aggressively. So Apple's got several strong arguments. But making those arguments, says Smolar, may ultimately hurt Apple, because it will be left with a weakened name that it will have a hard time protecting from others who want to use it. "The arguments Apple makes could come back to haunt them," says Smolar. From Cisco's statement Tuesday claiming that the companies were in final negotiations the night before Steve Jobs's Macworld keynote, it seems like the companies were playing a game of high-stakes poker - and Cisco, asking for some additional terms, gambled and lost. At least this round. It's still possible that Cisco and Apple could come to terms - but it looks increasingly dicey, now that we know more about what Cisco wants for the "iPhone" name. As Smolar and I were talking, Cisco general counsel Mark Chandler posted a blog entry explaining what Cisco was negotiating for. Chandler claimed that Cisco wanted to make sure that Apple and Cisco's products could interoperate and that their brands were distinct. Smolar's instant take: "Cisco wants to keep the voice over IP part of the business. That Apple wouldn't agree to that tells me that that VOIP where Apple is going, too." And there's the question of overseas trademarks. Both Apple and Cisco are global companies, and both have registered iPhone in a host of countries. Apple plans to launch its iPhone in the U.S., first, but it has global ambitions. blogs.business2.com

To: Mick Mørmøny who wrote (60559)	1/11/2007 5:40:53 PM
From: Mick Mørmøny	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 213186

For Apple's Jobs, IPhone Is More Than A Trademark Update January 11, 2007: 03:41 PM EST SAN FRANCISCO (Dow Jones) -- For Apple Inc. Chief Executive Steve Jobs, vision is everything, even if making that vision a reality includes staking the company's future on a product name Apple can't legally call its own. Jobs showed that determination when he unveiled the iPhone at the Macworld show in San Francisco this week. He said that Apple will begin selling the iPhone in June, but the company doesn't have Federal Communications Commission approval for the device, nor does it even have the right to use the name iPhone. At least that's the argument of networking giant Cisco Systems Inc., which on Wednesday filed a trademark-infringement suit against Apple, claiming that it has owned the term "iPhone" since 2000, when it acquired a company called InfoGear Technology Corp., which originally applied for the iPhone trademark in 1996. Cisco's Linksys wireless division uses the iPhone name on a series of phones that use the Internet to make phone calls. But for Jobs, a detail like getting trademark rights from Cisco isn't reason enough to stop Apple from going ahead with its iPhone. This is an executive, after all, who took on the Beatles several times over the use of the term Apple, and prevailed either through settlements or court decisions. Dealing with Cisco and its niche iPhone product is probably small potatoes compared with squaring off against the most-famous rock band in history. "It looks as if Apple said, "Damn the torpedoes, full speed ahead!" and decided it was going to use the name even though it don't own it," said Bruce Sunstein, an partner with intellectual-property law firm Bromberg & Sunstein, in Boston. "It should be no surprise that Apple got sued." Possibly more so than any other company, Apple (AAPL) has an image that has come about from selling products that are so distinctive that it is impossible to confuse them with any other. For example, Apple's success with the iPod music and video player has created a market where there is the iPod ... and everything else. Many would be hard-pressed to name another digital-media player, or another company that makes them, right off the top of their heads. Jobs is banking on that same idea with the iPhone. By showing off the touch- screen device to thousands of fans at Macworld, he immediately gained front-page headlines around the world and branded the iPhone for Apple. It was only after Cisco (CSCO) filed its suit in the U.S. District Court for the Northern District of California late Wednesday that the average consumer would likely come to learn about Cisco's iPhone. John Daniel, a partner at Kramer Levin Naftalis & Frankel in New York, said that when name disputes emerge in product-trademark cases, a concept called " zone of expansion" can be taken into consideration. This involves determining whether a product, because of its name or its associated industry, could conceivably move into another market and retain its identity even if there is another product with the name in that market. In the case of the Apple and Cisco iPhones, Daniel commented: "They may not be identical, but they could be pretty close. And it could be determined they are close enough to create market confusion." However, several lawyers say that the suit and the future of the iPhone name will probably come down to money, and that could be determined by how badly Jobs and Apple want to control what Sunstein called "the I-frontier family." Cisco apparently had many chances to sell the iPhone rights to Apple long before it filed its suit. According to the filing, Apple began approaching Cisco in 2001 "about the possibility of acquiring or licensing the rights to iPhone," but was rebuffed every time. "[Jobs] must be gambling that if it does ever go to trial, it will go away because somebody will hold [the iPhone name] to be generic," said Brian Banner, an intellectual property lawyer with Rothwell Figg, in Washington. "But it's probably never going to be tried fully and will be settled." money.cnn.com (END) Dow Jones Newswires 01-11-07 1541ET Copyright (c) 2007 Dow Jones & Company, Inc.