You've likely heard of the whole commotion that was caused over Apple's usage of the iPhone name, which was a trademark of Cisco. Well, the funny thing is that the whole deal is over, and Cisco has really lost. Well, not officially, as a statement from the 2 companies was released last Wednesday:
They settled to share the name, and "explore opportunities for interoperability in the areas of security, and consumer and enterprise communications."
I just about killed myself laughing when I heard this statement. Don't you see how ironic it is? Apple is the bigger and more dominant company. When named the product, no doubt they were aware of the already-present-but-obscure iPhone that had been created by Cisco. Now, I'm not a lawyer, but it sort of looked like Cisco had the upperhand of the situation. They had a phone that was called the iPhone, and the dissimilarities to that and Apple's iPhone are not many.
I kind of suspect that a sum of money was passed behind the public's backs. The name "iPhone" will mean Apple to everyone except computer nerds. It's unlikely that the name has any value for Cisco now. I can only hope that money was actually used to settle the agreement, because anything that Cisco's iPhone was worth is worth nothing now. Just look at Wikipedia's article on the iPhone, there is nothing save one small paragraph devoted to the lawsuit, let alone specifications of the Cisco product.
Is that so surprising? We knew that Apple wouldn't give up the iPhone trademark, especially because of the commotion it sparked after the keynote. Apple can basically use its huge weight to manuevre itself through legality issues whether it be the name "Apple", or simply DRM ties between iPod and iTunes.
At this point, it would have been simply better for Cisco to rename their product and sell the name to Apple.
