chrisvenus

Just imagine for a second that you are a big company witha globally known brand. You are releasing a new product and you want to keep it in line with your naming of outher products so you decide that iPhone would be a good name. You discover (and have known for some significant number of years) that this name is trademarked by somebody else.

Do you:

a) hold off on an announcement of the product until after the trade mark discussions are complete
b) announce the product but build the lack of name into your PR campaign or something clever like that until you have resolved the trade mark issue.
c) rename the product to something else - you've had several years and a huge marketing department to come up with a new one
d) ignore trade mark law and hope that because you're iPod and iMac and iWhatever were so globally recognised that you can steamroller the trademark holder into giving it up because you're an arrogant [censored] and announce the product with illegal name to a global audience.


I'd personally have put d as my last choice but apparently apple thought it was the best choice out there. Cisco are sueing them. http://blogs.cisco.com/news/2007/01/update_on_ciscos_iphone_tradem.html

Ahahahahaahahahahahahahahahahaha!

I'm sorry, I just find this very funny. If anybody can find an apple press release on the issue I'd be interested to hear it since I've not really heard an explanation from apple except some quotes of them saying that Cisco's trademark was tenuous at best and people with no clue on trademark law saying that because random people were referring to the iPhone (ie apple fanboys) that Cisco had failed to protect its trademark.