The iPhone Lawsuit: Apple, Cisco... and Ocean Telecom?
Filed in archive Mobile by jeff goldman on January 11, 2007
After Tuesday's big iPhone announcement, there's much discussion online today of Cisco's plans to sue Apple for infringing on its iPhone trademark.
"For about two years, Apple negotiated with Cisco to use the iPhone name, which would dovetail with its existing iPod, iMac and iTunes product-naming convention," writes ComputerWorld's Todd R. Weiss. "Those negotiations continued right until Tuesday, when Jobs stood on the stage at San Francisco's annual Macworld conference and announced the June release of Apple's iPhone. Cisco subsidiary Linksys has its own iPhone. But instead of signing a proposed contract submitted Monday night by Cisco, Apple made the iPhone announcement without a deal in place. Cisco's response: a 24-page trademark infringement lawsuit against Apple."
"It will be a big, expensive lawsuit," says Henry Sneath of Pittsburgh's Picadio Sneath Miller & Norton, P.C.
"Apple went so far as to create a phony company called Ocean Telecom Services LLC to get around Cisco's trademark, Cisco alleges," writes the AP's Rachel Konrad. "In an application to the U.S. Patent and Trade Office in March, Ocean Telecom billed itself as a foreign company doing business in Trinidad and Tobago
. The company listed its attorney as James Johnson. His contact information was an e-mail address from Google's free Web-based gmail service. On Thursday, the Apple spokeswoman said the company would not discuss Ocean Telecom."
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