It didn’t take Cisco long to slap Apple with a lawsuit over the use of the iPhone name, but Apple is not worried about the suit and believes it will win if taken to court.
“We think Cisco’s trademark lawsuit is silly,” Natalie Kerris, Apple’s Director of music public relations, told Macworld. “There are already several companies using the name iPhone for VOIP products, and we believe that Cisco’s U.S. trademark registration is tenuous at best.
The name iPhone is a registered trademark of Linksys, a division of Cisco. Apple and Cisco have reportedly been in negotiations for about two years over Apple’s desire to license the iPhone trademark, said Cisco spokesman John Noh. When Apple CEO Steve Jobs introduced the iPhone Tuesday at Expo, Cisco had not yet received a signed trademark licensing agreement from Apple, even though the two companies had been negotiating terms as recently as Monday night.
“We are the first company to ever use the iPhone name for a cell phone, and if Cisco wants to challenge us on it we are very confident we will prevail,” said Kerris.