Nontrivial Exercises

There Will Be an iBattle over the iTrademark for the iPhone

Robert Scoble points to a blog post written yesterday by Mark Chandler, Cisco’s SVP and General Counsel, explaining why Cisco has now filed a trademark infringement lawsuit against Apple, Inc., for the use of iPhone. It’s really a very amazing post and shows how leaders of companies are really using blogging to communicate with stake-holders.

I tend to believe Cisco that they had been negotiating with Apple in good faith over the trademark, but I wonder if they became a little impatient with all the hype Apple, Inc. has been getting in the past 48 hours. I don’t know if Apple officially responded to them Tuesday as Cisco said they expected, or if they officially didn’t respond, indicating they wanted to fight rather than play together.

Cisco’s Chandler notes that the remaining issue in the negotiations has been working out an agreement to allow the two companies to collaborate on the iPhone device or iPhone apps or iPhone networking.

I’m not sure exactly what Apple and Cisco had discussed in the area of collaboration, but it doesn’t sound like there are too many areas that having Cisco participate with Apple could really benefit Apple.

Perhaps Apple is really playing hardball and is going to try to wrest the iPhone trademark away from Cisco, or perhaps Cisco is a bit envious of all the glory Apple is getting and wants a piece of the action as well. Maybe a little of both.

It looks like we’re in for some wrangling, though, over the next 5 months before the Apple Inc. iPhone is set to be available.