Wednesday, January 10, 2007

Trouble in Paradise

Seemingly lost to most amidst the drooling and ogling over yesterday's monumental Apple iPhone release (I'd link to it but frankly, you couldn't trip over a newspaper, blog, website or newscast without hearing about it) was that pesky minor controversy of the trademark rights to the name "iPhone".

For those that forgot (or missed it altogether), in mid-December Linksys, a Cisco brand, unveiled their "iPhone" - a VoIP phone - and made some minor waves because of the name. Turns out Cisco has had the trademark since a 2000 acquisition, and while Apple and Cisco had been in negotiations over the name for the past few years (heavily over the past few weeks), Mr. Jobs went ahead and captured the attention of the world with a product that's infringing on a trademark. Today, Cisco formally filed suit and now things appear to be up in the air.

Is iMobile still available? How about iCell? or iBuy?

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