January 15 2007

Name lands Apple in trouble - again

Apple is being sued by Cisco Systems over trademark infringement just one day after the launch of its iPhone. This is not the first time that Apple has been troubled by trademark issues - when it launched iTunes it fell into contention with the Beatles' Apple record label.

Cisco has owned the iPhone trademark since 2000 and had been discussing use of the name with Apple before last Tuesday's launch of Apple's mobile phone plus. Looking at the names of other Apple products it was only going to be a matter of time before iPhone needed resolving. The San Francisco Chronicle has an interesting article if you want to know what both sides are saying.

Whichever side wins, Apple should be happy with the extra publicity it has sparked. How much this sort of publicity will cost the company is another matter.

I wonder how many 'inames' have been trademarked in the last week or whether Apple has already registered everything it can?

Emma Herrod