Sekoyen’s

A few hours after Apple Computer announced it’s mobile phone,
“iPhone”, it being sued by Cisco , a giant networking company. Cisco accuse that Apple is infringing its iPhone trademark. Even in Wiki, an iPhone is referred as Apple product. It’s not fair!

Cisco obtained the iPhone trademark in 2000 after completing the acquisition of Infogear, which previously owned the mark and sold iPhone products for several years. Infogear’s original filing for the trademark dates to March 20, 1996. Linksys, a division of Cisco, has been shipping a new family of iPhone products since early last year. On Dec. 18, Linksys expanded the iPhone® family with additional products…. read more

An iPhone, before this, is known as a Voice Over IP Phone, a product of Cisco. A telephone that works over the wireless network within a person’s home to make cheap phone calls over the Internet.

What so special about iPhone? Why Apple wants to name it mobile phone as iPhone? I believe, it is because of the iPod name. Apple cannot live without iPod. To survive (or to boost it sales) it’s product must depend on iPod, an “i” name-based. iPod has been sold for more than 70 millions units around the world.

Personally, I don’t like “iPhone” name, but I like “iPod”. I think, iPhone is not a product or a brand. It’s like a line of products such as the internet-based phones. iPhone name used by Cisco is more suitable.

If the tables were turned, do you think Apple would allow someone to blatantly infringe on their rights? How would Apple react if someone launched a product called iPod but claimed it was ok to use the name because it used a different video format? Would that be ok? We know the answer – Apple is a very aggressive enforcer of their trademark rights. And that needs to be a two-way street… read more at Cisco blog

Apple’s iPhone is a multimedia product. It don’t have to relies on “i” name. However, Apple is so stuborn and wants to use the iPhone name whatever it takes.

Come on Apple! Thrash that name! You do have other much better ideas don’t you? Just use any other name such as jPhone kPhone, lPhone or mPhone .

This entry was posted on Thursday, January 11th, 2007 at 11:34 pm and is filed under Mobile Phone. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Responses are currently closed, but you can trackback from your own site.