The first shots were fired yesterday (Wednesday Jan. 10th 2007) after peace talk negotiations for the last five years failed. This came as a shock to the apparent peaceful response from Cisco that I briefly mentioned at the end of Apple iPhone-d Us After All… .
I went to bed yesterday, with a peace of mind that the war was avoided. Then I was rudely awoken to the news that Cisco had filed a trademark infringement lawsuit.
Cisco’s Strategy: Attack when you are least expecting it. I don’t think it’s a coincidence that Apple enthusiasts were emotionally high and overjoyed by the good news about the iPhone. Then Cisco pulled away the very ground they were standing on, the fact that the so endeared name will cause controversy into the finite future.
Apple Inc. (formerly Apple Computers Inc. until Tuesday) has been fighting the trademark war with Apple Corps Ltd. for years, with substantial monetary losses on both sides of the gunfire.
New York Times covered the story more detailed also interviewing Apple’s vice president for worldwide communications, Katie Cotton and Mark Chandler, Cisco’s general counsel. Yahoo! also has some good coverage.
I’ll be watching this with interest.
I’ve not got enough information to hand to formulate an opinion just yet .. but when I do!
By the way: I thought it might be good to speak sometime. If you’re on Skype, you can catch me on: octaneinteractive
Speak to you soon…
I admit I probably don’t have enough information, but this post does descibe my initial take on the matter.
(Regarding Skype, as this next post might illustrate, I have not been static enough for a while to do much chatting. I don’t even have a Skype account, but I will get back to you on that one when things settle.)