Buzz Out Loud Lounge: How would people feel if Microsoft just brazenly stole...

I'm going to invent a new gaming console

Gonna call it the xRhombus 720.

Probably right.....but.....

Its a US suit because they hold the US mark. But Apple holds the most of the trademarks overseas. They can just as easily countersue in Europe. They have to work something out.....and Cisco knew they had Apple over a barrel with the intro being this week.

Cisco is not going to want to buy Apple's marks overseas so they are just working out language and "partnerships". Cisco is just ramping up pressure.

Hmmm.

Actually the way I had seen it is that if anyone comes out with a tech gadget and sticks an i in front of it - iradio, itelevision, iphone - it will make consumers immediately think of Apple and the ipod. Which makes me think that anyone other than Apple naming something an iphone knew exactly what they were doing, trying to use buzz from other products to get theirs noticed. I'm not exactly feeling sorry for them - it was their choice to try and snag the name and it's been rumor'd to be an Apple upcoming product for some time.

Cisco had it in 2000

If I do my math correctly, that was before the iPod and even OS X. The iMac came out a year or so before Cisco got the name. However, that was still before the iCraze.

(NT) correction: capitalistic :P

Okay, here's the deal

I'm complete and total Apple fanboy; however, I can realize when they do something wrong. Cisco and Apple had been in talks for some time to come to an agreement on usage of the term. They were apparently close to an agreement when Mad Dog made his speech. Since an agreement hadn't been reached, Cisco got mad and filed suit. Either Steve decided to be a bit of a jerk, or he thought that they were on good enough terms to go ahead and use the name. Steve might have been better off if he called it a code name or something along those lines, a la iTV.

-Ryan

Actually it's not impossible

As more information is released it is becoming clear that Cisco acquired the patent through a purchase of a purchase, that they did NOT have a product with that name during the entire span of the 6 years that they owned the mark, then a few days before the grace period would end they submitted a document stating that they had a product named iPhone in the market (which was not true), then they waited 7 months (from May 2006 to December 2006) to rebrand an existing product with the iPhone name.

And the only reason that Cisco bothered to do this is because they want some money from Apple. They are willing to do the absolute least to make sure that they can collect a licensing fee for a name that they did not use for several years and don't seem to care about except when it comes to "owning" the name.

Talk about squatish!