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iPhone Vs. iPhone: Cisco Vs. Apple
January 11, 2007
Tom has done a great job on this article and he is right on here – on many fronts. This is a must read if you are interested the iPhone vs. iPhone case. He cites trademarks and the shell company called Ocean Telecom Services which Tom figures must be an Apple shell company.
This morning Bloomberg was discussing that this company is an Apple shell company by the way.
This part of Tom’s argument shows tremendous insight:
The most compelling or likely attack on Cisco's trademark is on "a family of marks". The best analogy to use is McDonalds. Say you decide to start selling McTofu burgets - even if there is no trademark on McTofu burgers, McDonalds can go to court and state they have a "family of marks". In fact, the court has ruled in the past in favor of McDonalds against a mattress company that tried to trademark McSleep. They ruled it belongs to McDonalds. So what Apple could do is say "we put 'i' in front of something is what we do, with iPod, iMac, iTunes, etc.". Of course what shoots that down is the fact that Cisco trademarked this term in 1996. So what the trademark experts are saying is that Cisco in effect let their trademark expire and only brought it back later AFTER Apple had already brought to market a family of marks and products with the letter "i". Most experts expect that Cisco and Apple with settle this dispute before it goes to court, but knowing Steve Jobs, I wouldn't be surprised if he battle big, mighty Cisco. It's not like Steve Jobs ever tried to take on any other big heavyweights... like say Microsoft. :)
Where I disagree with Tom is the similarity in the products. I see them as very similar and even if the Apple device is aimed at consumers there is the potential this device will be a hit in the enterprise market. I personally am interested in buying one for example. I am not sure I am thrilled with an onscreen keyboard with no tactile feedback. But who knows, I could potentially get used to it. The point is this device is powerful enough to become a laptop replacement for some. That means my friend, that this device can be used in business for field sales people and mobile salespeople who make presentations in the pharmaceutical space. The consumer/business crossover is greater than most of us think.
But in the end my take is Apple has the upper hand in this argument as Cisco’s iPhone brand is too obscure and hasn’t been protected. This echoes what I wrote on the topic earlier today.
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Tech Musings: Apple, Cisco, Blackberry
January 11, 2007
I am musing a bit later into the day and as I was pressed for time – At this hour it is completely plausible that I may not even muse effectively. If you find today’s musings substandard, please come back tomorrow where the musing will start all over again. This is of course unless I get another case of muser’s block.
Yes, writers block can be very real. Sometimes people (writers, bloggers, etc) miss deadlines or just make mistakes such as forgetting to muse before noon. Programmers make mistakes as well and occasionally they write code that points satellites directly into the sun and accidentally causes their batteries to fail. Of course this is probably a mistake that costs hundreds of millions of taxpayer dollars.
But who needs videos of Mars when we have the LA-based Apprentice to watch. By the way does this mean the Donald has already purchased all of Manhattan and is looking for a new city to conquer?As if the problems with bad code weren’t enough, it seems everywhere you look you see security holes. Adobe patched their PDF flaw today thankfully. Apple now apparently has a flaw with their Safari browser which puts their browsers at risk. This is not great news to me as my 3-year-old has a Mac and I have no idea how to update the software on it. I guess I will be learning more about Macs this weekend. Hopefully between now and then I will figure out where the other mouse button is (I still can only find one). I have been looking for the blasted thing since October.
But at Apple it looks like the lawyers screwed up as much as the software writers. Why? Well by now the only news bigger than the Apple iPhone is the fact that Cisco is suing Apple because the networking leader also has a product called the Cisco iPhone.It seems that Apple and Cisco have been negotiating over the use of this name for years and one would surmise the two companies could not come to an agreement which Apple was comfortable with so Apple just said the hell with Cisco and went ahead and made their product announcement.
In my opinion, the argument Cisco will make in a preliminary injunction is that the product from Apple will cause confusion in the market. Apple will argue that Cisco’s customers are sophisticated business customers and Apple is targeting young consumers. They will also argue the phones have different uses as Cisco’s phones do not work on mobile networks, etc.
Both iPhones will work on WiFi connections however so it could be tough to argue these products are very different.The iPhone name has been used by other companies so Cisco may not have much of a leg to stand on here. In addition, they will have tough time proving confusion as Apple already has a family of marks that begin with the letter i. Most people probably think the iPhone comes from Apple and this is bad for Cisco.
Apple’s argument? If Cisco has such a strong mark how can the surveys of potential customers (surveys are often used in courts to show confusion) show that most people think the phone comes from Apple and not Cisco?
The trouble for Apple is that their iPhone is a smartphone and that implies corporate usage. For Cisco the problem is no one on planet Earth besides a handful of geeks and bloggers knows they have a product named iPhone
In addition Apple seems to own the iPhone trademark outside the US while Cisco owns it in the US.
In the end the two companies will likely agree to precede their product names with their company names and/or logos. So we will see an Apple iPhone and a Cisco/Linksys iPhone.
My take? This is all lots of fun to write about but really, who cares. I hope these guys get this settled quickly and go back to taking over the world.
Well getting back to the bedroom. The bedroom? How did we end up there? Well it seems this article from Forbes informs us that Smartphones such as Blackberries are ruining our sex lives. This is tough to believe as in the last 18 months about 70% of the TMC team has had babies (Dave Rodriguez had baby Alex Rodriguez today in fact.) This would certainly explain why I can’t get anyone at work to respond to my e-mails at night. :)
Oh and if you are reading my musings in bed, please put the device down. From there, you’re on your own.
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First ITEXPO East ’07 News
January 11, 2007
It look likes 2007 is in full swing with the first announcements coming from Internet Telephony Conference & Expo already. Aculab will be demonstrating their new HMP software allowing developers to take advantage of IVR, fax, conferencing and other functions of any computer from a laptop to a blade server. Now you probably don’t want to run 10,000 ports on a laptop but with today’s systems – like this ice-cooled unit from Dell, who knows what the port limits are for today’s computers?
If you want more info come to the show the week after next. I hope to see you there.
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A Banner Blogger Day
January 11, 2007
It is good to be a blogger today with the news that for the first time in a federal court, two of the press seats will be reserved for bloggers. After two years of negotiations with judicial officials across the country, the Media Bloggers Association, a nonpartisan group with about 1,000 members working to extend the powers of the press to bloggers, has won credentials to rotate among members at the trial of I. Lewis "Scooter" Libby.
Part of this Washington Post article is a bit disturbing but accurate and follows below:
"Blogs are first and foremost a conversation, people talking," said Jeff Jarvis, a journalist-turned-blogger who created a forum called BuzzMachine.Blogs, he said, have a "different biorhythm" where postings that are initially inaccurate or unfair are corrected online through readers comments and updated blog entries. "This is a world," he said, "where you publish first and edit later."
In reality people are looking for their news to be faster and faster. Sometimes they don’t mind inaccuracies if they get the news first and it gets corrected by the community.
While the concept of blogging material that could be potentially incorrect disturbs many, the world is changing.
In the end, the consumer dictates what they want and they have spoken.
This past weekend I was at a birthday party and one of my relatives was thanking another relative because he hooked her on the Perez Hilton blog. She continued “I don’t need to subscribe to People Magazine anymore.” Again, consumers decide what the form of news will be and speed wins.
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800Free411
January 11, 2007
This morning I needed a phone number while driving to work. I despise paying whatever the cost is to get a phone number from information. Perhaps this is because the same information is freely available on the web. I was going to just look up the number on the phone’s browser at a traffic light but I remembered someone recently told me about 800-Free411.
I think I may have heard this at the last ITEXPO in San Diego but I am not 100% sure. So anyway I tried dialing the number – thinking whether the number starts with 800 or 888. I couldn’t remember for sure.
The phone was answered and an automated greeting walked me through the process of city, state and listing. On the third try – I was connected to a very pleasant live operator who found the number for me.Just before I got the number I received a prerecorded greeting from Flamingo Bay in Vegas who was offering a free getaway.
I was enamored by the service and called it again. This time it told me if I pressed 9 I could get the last number the service gave me. Very slick. The system will also SMS you the number. You are charged for the minutes you use from your cell phone but with so many people buying buckets of minutes they never use, this shouldn’t be a problem.
The concept of free service sponsored by ads is not new but I hope the company does well and that advertisers embrace such services. Why? These are the kinds of services that are fun to use, fun to write about and they disrupt current business models for the benefit of consumers.
In a weird way the mobile operators who have the most to lose from such a service could end up making more money on SMS revenue generated by 800Free411. In theory, more people will use the service because it is free and that means more SMS messages being sent.
If you use the service feel free to leave your comments below for others to read about.
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