Cisco And Apple Reach iPhone Trademark Agreement

[Maccus Aurelius]

Anyway, I wannit to be called the Newton. It would've been great if Jobs presented that first before presenting the current release.

 

[shadowfax]

OK, so first off, I really am an Apple fan boy. I think they make some of the best products in the world. Not to say I'm not without my complaints, to the tune of experienced minor design flaws in my TiBook and MacBook, but I overlook it easily enough--I feel it's pretty minor compared to what I'd have to deal with elsewhere.

That said, I am laughing at you, Stella. Where are your valid points?

I don't know that I have the notion that Apple INVENTED "iEverything", but I want to know who did. Stella repeatedly accused people of a failure to do research, and touted the "Infogear Iphone / I Phone" as a front runner. This is not strictly true at all. While they filed for "I Phone" in 1993 and "IPhone" in 1996, their TMs were not actually registered untill 1997 and 1999, respectively. So that's Trademarks. They got the first Trademark. Oooh, scary. That doesn't mean crap. You have to put something out to market. And they did. In 1998. What year is that? Oh, yeah, the same year as the original iMac G3. Nice. Read all about it on Wikipedia.org/iPhone and Wikipedia.org/Linksys iPhone. Wikipedia on the iMac in popular culture is also an iOpener. Speaking of, there was another internet "i" application called i-Opener. However, THIS was released in 1999 at the earliest. Now, note that both the Infogear iPhone and the iOpener are front runners of the iNamingScheme. Also note that neither of them had a big market splash at their time, and no one knows about them now, except via Apple iPhone interest. Apple may not have been the first company to even think of the idea, but they made it a popular cliché, and they have more products than any other company named using the scheme (iMac, iMovie, iTunes, iDVD, iDisk, iPod, iSync, iPhoto, iLife, iWork, iWeb). Probably more than 75% of other iProductNames are products designed for use with the iPod.

So much for research. the only other iLead I have is i.Link from Sony, which, ironically, is their name for their dumbed-down 4-pin version of Apple's IEEE1394 FireWire. Amusingly, their firewire implementation means that power is fed on a separate cable, so that you have to have 2 cables for all your i.Link devices.

Anyway, if you do much of any research, you will find that Apple really cornered the iMarket. Whether or not they were the first to market with an actual iProduct is something I cannot conclusively figure out. The fact that InfoGear tried to trademark IPhone, however, is of no significance to me. Proving that you're thinking about making a product with a certain name doesn't mean crap till you actually make it and name it. I think it's the same with the patent office, to an extent. you sure do have to show that you're using it to maintain it.

 

[maxp1]

There's a great feature on Macrumors I've had to resort to a few times.
If you are signed in, click on the User Name you are tired of hearing from and select View Plublic Profile. Then you have to option to add that person to your Ignore list!
That way all of their posts are removed from your version of Macrumors and you save yourself lots of exasperation.
PS – You need to be signed in for this to work.

That's tempting, but I'm not that annoyed with Stella. I agree with eenu, I'm going to manually ignore Stella until hopefully he develops a more friendly style to put across valid points.


Onward...

You say "they take what other people do, make it better and popularize it" all in one breath and trivialize Apple to such a degree it's not even funny. For your infotainment, Apple does not "popularize" their products, the consumer does. We do it with our wallets. Did Apple "popularize" The Cube? No. If it was as simple as you make it sound, they sure as hell would have.

I'm not of the opinion that what Apple does is trivial. But they do something that I have a hard time putting my finger on. They take existing devices and make them better/usable. It's certainly a laudable thing to do but it's not really first line innovation, where you come out with brand new products that nobody has ever seen before. (Yes, there are some exceptions.) It's like 'This is a new form factor' or 'this is a new way to use it'.

Regarding populatity, maybe populizing is the wrong word. But at least in the last 5 years or so they've been very effective at making their products 'hip'. Consumers didn't do that by themselves, they had help from Apple advertising.

 

[Maccus Aurelius]

Well if it matters at all, Apple never actually claims to invent any of these things, but rather tout it's design and usability, which is something they do rather well. It's not like they run some type of Chrysler-esque campaign claiming to be the inventors of the minivan, but they always point out how they redesign and refresh current technology so that it's easier to use while having a much better industrial design. Short of levitating and going back in time there's really not much more one could actually "invent" when it comes to computes other than take present functions, elaborate them and fine tune better implementations of them

 

[EagerDragon]

1 down, 199 more to go.
Apple lawyers must really be overworked.

 

[JGowan]

I'm not of the opinion that what Apple does is trivial. But they do something that I have a hard time putting my finger on.

I know you're having a hard time putting your finger on "something"... that's why we're having a friendly discussion over a difference of opinions. When you make statements on this board (or any other for that matter), it's nice when you think before you post. Go get references, quotes and links so that you can make statement that BACKS UP your own opinion.

They take existing devices and make them better/usable. It's certainly a laudable thing to do but it's not really first line innovation, where you come out with brand new products that nobody has ever seen before. (Yes, there are some exceptions.) It's like 'This is a new form factor' or 'this is a new way to use it'.

I have to disagree. And so would Steve Jobs...

When hard times came to the tech sector, we went to our investors and said, 'We're going to spend more on R&D and innovate our way out of this downturn.

If Apple was really just a ME-TOO company, the world would not be watching their every move. There just aren't any other tech companies that make huge headlines with their products. Perhaps occasionally, you'll see the PlayStation's Ken Kutaragi on a mag cover but generally speaking, just don't see a CEO and their new product on the cover of Time. In the iPhone alone, Steve Jobs said that Apple had filed over 200 patents and planned to vigorously protect them all. Perhaps many innovations that Apple come up with are in the software they create or internally in the products they create. Just because you can't see them, doesn't mean they're just grabbing parts of the shelve and Frankenstein-ing them together (although I'm aware that many parts they used are just that).

Remember: Patents=Innovations.

In a related way, it would not really be fair to take something, say HIGH DEFINITION movie players, and not totally laud the efforts of the pioneers of the two players, Toshiba and Sony. Both are doing something very unique though technically, they've "only" "taken something and made it better": watch pre-recorded video on a TV. The R&D dollars spent on "simply" improving on the current standard are vast fortunes because even greater sums of money are there for the victor.

As of late, I can only think of one product that is poised to be truly "NEVER-BEFORE-SEEN" are MyVu glasses that allow ipod video to be watched on the go and appear to be a big-screen experience LINK . And then there's the new Wii videogame controller that is the same (it controls a videogame) and yet, very new and different (oh, and innovative). LINK

]Regarding populatity, maybe populizing is the wrong word. But at least in the last 5 years or so they've been very effective at making their products 'hip'. Consumers didn't do that by themselves, they had help from Apple advertising.

I don't think Apple's advertising is all that great actually and I'm not alone. The late SWITCH campaign was awful and really didn't generate a lot of switchers. The current IM A MAC-IM a PC campaign is being criticized for being overly critical to those people who choose Windows boxes. The DANCING IPOD USERS campaign is seriously played out. Aside from new, more colorful backgrounds and different music, one ad is the same as the next.

What makes Apple products HIP or COOL is not the advertising. You've got it backwards. The products themselves are whats HIP and COOL. The Mac Faithful (or the Mac Fan Boi's, depending on who you talk to) do not point to a commercial when they talk about the latest Apple gizmo. They pull something hip and cool out of their pocket and point to the latest Apple gizmo.

 

[clevin]

u guys can rest a little bit, its not that nice to turn the topic into personal attack. no matter what feeling u have towards a certain member, please keep it to yourself, of course, facts based discussion is still encouraged, im sure mods agree with me on this.

for the guy who stated "trademark doesn't mean crap", i would suggest you seriously learn something about importance of trademark and how the tradmarks contribute to this competitive commercial world. No matter how much u love apple, don't throw away the rules, otherwise, eventually nobody will benifit from it.

 

[JGowan]

u guys can rest a little bit, its not that nice to turn the topic into personal attack. no matter what feeling u have towards a certain member, please keep it to yourself, of course, facts based discussion is still encouraged, im sure mods agree with me on this.

Who are "u guys"? The guys talking about "Fan Bois"? I've had a couple of lengthy posts but I'm trying to be (fairly) nice about it. If there are any really OUT-OF-LINE posts on the board that truly bother you, report the link to the moderators.

This "RELAX" thing... what is that? People can express their opinions. Let someone call me a FANBOY -- whatever. If your skin is not thick enough to post or READ posts on this board, there are other thousands of other Forums on the internet for you to be a part of.

Remember -- a post here will either garner a "WOW--WELL SAID" or "I DON'T AGREE WITH AND HERE'S WHY". And then there's the sad posts that sound like a PAULA ABDUL, I AGREE WITH YOU, RANDY sentence and get's completely ignored.

It's a discussion board and, for everything (EVERYTHING) that's said on this board, there will be people who agree and those that don't. That's what the POST REPLY button is all about.

 

[gauriemma]

Ok, sounds like a stretch, but if Apple wasn't first, then why did they have to explain that the i stood for internet?

I always thought the 'i' stood for 'individual'. The iMac was hardly an internet-focused machine in 1998. And the only thing 'internet-y' about the iPod is the iTunes store.

 

[gauriemma]

I knew Apple wouldn't come out on the losing side of this. It just wouldn't be right if the iPhone wasn't called, well, the iPhone!

I think 'iMobile' would be better. 'iPhone' is too limiting.

Of course, T-Mobile might get their undies in a bunch then...

 

[JGowan]

Anyway, I wannit to be called the Newton. It would've been great if Jobs presented that first before presenting the current release.

Lots of similarities, no doubt. I never really understood why Steve Jobs wanted to squash this. I suppose #1), it wasn't Steve's baby. #2) R&D dollars needed to be spent elsewhere. #3) Jobs didn't feel like the Newton could compete in the market or #4) the market wasn't big enough to justify being in that branch of the game.

Whatever the reason, it's gonna be "iPhone" as the name and with Steve at the helm, it's never going to come back as the "Newton". At least in name. In form factor, the iPhone will eventually become the PDA that countless Mac fans have been asking for since before the iPod showed up.

 

[JGowan]

Apple will sell tens of millions of their iPhone. Cisco will sell tens of thousands of their iPhone. Winner: Apple.

Cisco and Apple will explore opportunities for interoperability in the areas of security, and consumer and enterprise communications.

Now, unless this actually benefits Apple and the phone itself, this interoperability won't happen. And if it does happen, Apple wins, Cisco wins and the consumer wins.

No losers.

 

[shadowfax]

u guys can rest a little bit, its not that nice to turn the topic into personal attack. no matter what feeling u have towards a certain member, please keep it to yourself, of course, facts based discussion is still encouraged, im sure mods agree with me on this.

Uhhh...

for the guy who stated "trademark doesn't mean crap", i would suggest you seriously learn something about importance of trademark and how the tradmarks contribute to this competitive commercial world. No matter how much u love apple, don't throw away the rules, otherwise, eventually nobody will benifit from it.

Look, there's no reason to get hypocritical. You just told people to stop making it personal, and then you insulted me. I don't really care--in fact, I'd suggest you turn back and actually learn something about the English language--to the point, this thing called hyperbole. You're obviously skilled at using it, as you just did when you insulted me. When I said that trademarks/patents don't mean a thing, I mean that they don't matter to the creation of a naming scheme. if you try to trademark a name in 1993 and then never use it, you don't get to keep it. If you can't hold the name you trademark, you can't keep it. So the important date is not when you file for it, it's when you back that up with a product. My whole point is that what validates the whole process is the product release, NOT the original filing. so the 1996 date is not the one to look at, the 1998 one is. The public doesn't have a habit of reading such applications. You can't "start the iCrap revolution" until you release a product.

So, Stella said that Apple was not the first with an iProduct to market, and that if anyone did just a little research, they'd prove her right. I've done some research, and the answer is not readily available. Certainly, I would guess that Apple is not the very first to make an iProduct, but I am really wondering who is, because it doesn't appear to be iNfoGear.

At the end of the day, it's certainly true that in the public's mind, the only company they associate with iSomething is Apple. Apple may not have invented the naming scheme, but they took it over with the iMac and the iPod. There is no other iProduct out there that has remotely stood the test of time (9 years for the iMac). Not that I think apple should get rewarded with the trademark for i<insert finger here>... that's too much. But iPhone?

The company that has all the major iProducts vs. the company who bought some other company who named their crappy product iPhone, and then didn't make a new version when it fizzled out, and should have lost its trademark when it failed in 2006 to have had a product named iPhone on the market for over 5 years, but didn't because it posted a picture of a nameless VoIP phone box with a sticker outside the shrinkwrap that said "iPhone" on it. That's pretty stupid, if you ask me.

 

[blybug]

Apple DID have to explain the "i" because next to nobody had heard of it, and nobody was using it in exactly the way Apple was. (Their explanation being rather vague--it could be "I" or "Internet".) Explaining a new name just makes sense. And yes, Cisco's claim on the name was legitimate--they bought the company that used the iPhone name long ago.

You really think Apple was riding on some existing brand awareness that "i" prefixes had?

Exactly...there were probably a few other iProducts nobody had ever heard of back in 1998, but the iMac was the first major product and cemented the association of "i" with Apple ever since. I specifically recall Steve's keynote intro of the iMac and explanation that the "i" was for internet. The most popular vowel prefix for "tech" products at that time was "e" because "e"mail was just going mainstream and unoriginal companies named everything e-this and e-that...the eBandwagon.

I remember thinking the "i' sounded awkward when the iMac came out since I was used to hearing e-whatever. But then the wave of iThings both from Apple and Apple-wannabes began and 10 years later it seems like we've always been having iStuff.

Apple may not have been iFirst but they absolutely did not jump on bandwagon...there was no bandwagon until Apple adopted this naming convention.

 

[dernhelm]

And so ends the foremost saga of our times. Fittingly, it ends with the most stupid of all outcomes.

I think I'll make a phone-like device, and call it iPhone too!

Why should anyone be confused?

 

[eddyg]

Who cares if Cisco sells more iPhones?

Personally I don't think Cisco/Linksys care whether their VOIP iPhone
sells more or less because of this agreement. It was simply a lever to
enable Cisco to get Apple to add VOIP (eventually) to their iPhone.

They see that the Apple iPhone is likely to succeed. They have a vision
whereby the Internet is integrated into the home. This agreement will
enable Apple to hopefully better integrate their iPhone into Cisco's vision.

What does this mean to you?

Well it means that when you get home your iPhone automatically switches
to be using your home phone rather than a cellular phone. It means that
at home your phone turns into a remote control for your entire home. All
of this using existing open standards.

From Ciscos point of view they are hoping that this home integration will
be via Cisco kit, specifically VOIP. Even if the home integration isn't via
Cisco kit, Cisco still benefits by selling more network equipment due
to the increased Internet traffic.

Cheers, Ed.

 

[123]

When I said that trademarks/patents don't mean a thing, I mean that they don't matter to the creation of a naming scheme.

No, you were talking about inventing the iScheme. It was obviously Apple that started marketing iProducts and are being associated with them now. However, you should realize that successful marketing has little to do with invention.

 

[shadowfax]

No, you were talking about inventing the iScheme. It was obviously Apple that started marketing iProducts and are being associated with them now. However, you should realize that successful marketing has little to do with invention.

This is true. I ask again, though, who actually released the first iProduct?

 

[rxse7en]

I wonder if Cisco may provide new Macs with VoIP iPhones in the future? Can do all your calling over .Mac and use your new iPhone, er, iPhone...hmm, I mean VOIPhone.

B

 

[Maccus Aurelius]

Bah...well they could've at least given us the colorful classic Apple logo