February 21, 2007: Apple has settled with Cisco over the iPhone trademark, which Cisco legally owns but Apple wants to use.
Under the agreement, the two companies can use the iPhone trademark on products worldwide. The two companies also dismiss pending lawsuits against each other and agree to “explore opportunities for interoperability in security and consumer and enterprise communications.”
It’s a classic piece of Apple CEO Steve Jobs rolling over the opposition.
The iPhone trademark: How Apple’s phone got its name
The Apple iPhone now rules the smartphone world, but it was other The iPhone, which is considerably less well known. While Apple first began prefixing its products with the “i” with the launch of the original iMac in 1998, the “i” in this case stood for “Internet.” However, Apple kept things vague enough that it could use the prefix for later unconnected products like the first-generation iPod.
The same year Apple released the iMac, InfoGear launched its own touchscreen home phone, which it called the “iPhone”. In the late 1990s, there was a trend of “internet devices” designed to allow users to check email or browse the web without using home computers. It was a bit like today’s “internet of things” devices, but without the subtleties.
National Semiconductor’s Project Mercury leads to InfoGear’s iPhone
As stated in an interesting article by Internet History PodcastThe InfoGear iPhone grew out of a skunkworks project at National Semiconductor called “Project Mercury”. It eventually became a product called the iPhone.
Venture capitalist Robert Ackerman, who helped bring it to market, revealed the origin of the name.
“The way we came up with this is we looked at the phone as the original information device,” Ackerman said. “This was the evolution of the original information device – on steroids. So the iPhone was an Internet phone … an information phone.”
(It’s worth noting that somewhat like the “2000” suffix, the use of the “i” prefix or suffix was not unique in the 1990s. There was also the iVillage website, the NBCi NBC Internet portal, AOL’s iGolf channel, and others.)
InfoGear iPhone brings some firsts
Photo: InfoGear
InfoGear first showed off its iPhone at the Consumer Electronics Show in 1998. It wasn’t cheap, with a $499 price tag and extra fees for Internet access. But it did offer some exciting advances, including a visual voicemail, basic apps, and very early use of touch technology.
The idea was that the InfoGear iPhone would “co-exist with a PC in the same way a microwave co-exists with an oven”.
The device was well reviewed and eventually sold around 100,000 units. But, as with many internet devices at the time, the technology just wasn’t there yet to make the InfoGear iPhone indispensable.
Cisco then acquired InfoGear along with the iPhone trademark. Cisco stopped releasing products with the “iPhone” name in 2001, although the trademark remained.
Apple is considering making a mobile phone
Apple, for its part, had been considering some version of the iPhone for a long time before introducing its first phone in 2007. In fact, Apple acquired the domain name www.iphone.org on December 14, 1999, sparking years of speculation that the company was considering a mobile phone.
If there was any other name Apple could have used, it ended when the iMac, iBook, iPod, and iTunes Store became hits with each other. From Apple’s point of view, the “i” prefix was as recognizable as any other brand it owned.
Steve Jobs made his mark on the iPhone trademark
What happened next, however, was brave. Knowing that Cisco owned the iPhone trademark, Apple introduced the iPhone anyway in January 2007. The next day, Cisco filed a lawsuit against Apple.
In his book, Adam Lashinsky described Jobs’ outrageous handling of the situation Inside Apple:
“(Charles Giancarlo, then Cisco’s chief executive,) got a call directly from Steve Jobs. ‘Steve called and said he wanted it,’ Giancarlo recalled. ‘He didn’t offer us anything for it. It was like a promise to be our best friend. And we said, ‘No, we plan to use it,'” Apple’s legal department called. Shortly thereafter, Apple’s legal department called in the “brand,” meaning that, in Apple’s legal opinion, Cisco did not adequately protect its intellectual property rights by promoting the name.
…
The negotiation showed some of Steve Jobs’ classic negotiating tactics. Giancarlo said Jobs called him at home over dinner on Valentine’s Day because the two sides were arguing. Jobs spoke for a while, relative Giancarlo. “And then he said to me, ‘Can you get the email home?’Giancarlo was taken back. It was 2007, after all, when broadband Internet was ubiquitous in US homes, let alone a Silicon Valley executive who had spent years working on advanced Internet technology. “And he’s asking me if I can get an email home. You know he’s just trying to push my buttons—in the nicest way possible.” Cisco gave up the fight shortly after.
Another Apple-Cisco deal for iOS
As if that wasn’t enough, Apple later “borrowed” Cisco’s other big trademark — IOS (which Cisco used for its Internet operating system). Apple once again got its way. Even the promised Cisco-Apple team-up to “explore opportunities for interoperability” ultimately did not materialize.
Have you ever seen one of the original InfoGear iPhones? Remember the iPhone or “Internet Appliance” trademark dispute of the 1990s? Leave your collections below.
