iPhone – Whats all The Fuss About?
// January 13th, 2007 // No Comments » // Tech
The iPhone is a combination camera phone, PDA, multimedia player, and wireless communication device announced by Apple CEO Steve Jobs during his keynote address at the Macworld Conference & Expo on 9 January 2007.[1][2] The iPhone will support push e-mail, mobile telephone, text messaging, web browsing and other wireless information services. Apple has indicated that OS X will run on the iPhone, but has not clearly revealed the distinction between Mac OS X, the OS running on Macs, and OS X on the iPhone.
For Complete Information on iPhone Specifications and Technical Details Follow this: iPhone
The Issue:
Infogear originally filed for the U.S. trademark “I Phone” on September 3, 1993, and later applied for “iPhone” on 20 March 1996. Both trademarks have been registered in the United States since 1999. Cisco Systems obtained the iPhone trademarks after its acquisition of Infogear in 2000. The term has been used on the (Infogear) iPhone since 1997 and (Linksys) iPhone was launched in 2006. Cisco’s trademarks cover “communications terminals comprising computer hardware and software providing integrated telephone, data communications and personal computer functions” (1993 filing) and “computer hardware and software for providing integrated telephone communication with computerized global information networks” (1996 filing).
Cisco representatives stated on 9 January 2007, that their company and Apple had been in negotiations regarding the trademark and expected to reach an agreement about the name shortly, according to documents received by Apple’s lawyers the night before the Macworld keynote event. Cisco has since announced they are suing Apple over the infringement of the trademark iPhone, seeking an injunction in federal court to prohibit Apple from using the name.
A separate U.S. trademark application for “iPhone” was filed on 26 September 2006, by a heretofore unknown entity named Ocean Telecom Services LLC, covering “handheld and mobile devices”. The application claims a priority date of 27 March 2006 based on a trademark filing in Trinidad and Tobago, serial number 37060. Apple had previously filed under its own name for the “iPhone” trademark in Australia, claiming the same priority date and using the same Trinidad and Tobago application, indicating that, in all likelihood, Ocean Telecom is a front company for Apple.
Apple has made filings in various countries outside the U.S., including Australia, where a separate iPhone trademark was filed in 2002 and registered in 2005. It is presently unclear whether Cisco owns any rights to “iPhone” elsewhere.
According to the WHOIS database, Apple owns the generally non-profit organizations domain name iphone.org (domain created 1999-12-06), Cisco owns the network-oriented domain name iphone.net (domain created 1998-01-28), and the Internet Phone Company LLC based in Santa Rosa, California owns the commercial domain name iphone.com (domain created 1995-08-24). Internet Phone Company LLC is not a subsidary of Apple or Cisco. The site was hit with a surge of traffic following the Jobs keynote and was temporarily taken down.
The use of the name iphone in secondary TLD is unclear. It was reported that, as early as November 2006, that in some countries the relevant domain names are owned by individuals, including, for example, iphone.us and iphone.cn.
