Six weeks ago, Apple, Inc. announced at the MacWorld Expo that they would be releasing a revolutionary new phone: the iPhone. That same day, Cisco Systems, who already had a product released under the very same name, filed suit against Apple for trademark infringement. The issue has now been settled, and neither company ever appeared in court.

Late Wednesday, February 21st, Apple and Cisco Systems released a joint statement in which they announced that they had managed to come to an agreement regarding Apple’s use of the iPhone name. Apparently, the two companies have now agreed to share the trademark; meaning that we might see two product lines, both named iPhone. Although the exact terms of the agreement were not released in their entirety due to nondisclosure agreements, Apple will now be able to go ahead as planned and release their new product under the iPhone name without further trouble. The statement didn’t include any mention of monetary agreements either way, but it did mention that the two companies would be working together in the future to solve security interoperability problems, as well as the exploration of new consumer and business communications ventures.

To me it looks like Cisco caved to the demands of Apple, and that Apple got exactly what it wanted. The “i” prefix is all-or-nothing to Apple these days, and I think that they would gladly have gone to court over the issue. Not only that, but Cisco really hasn’t done anything in terms of being recognized as having ever had an iPhone product line – which, by the way, are a series of VoIP phones. For Cisco it would have made little sense to go through a lengthy legal proceeding to defend the name of a product that hardly anyone knows about or even uses. If they hadn’t caved, it would probably have cost them a lot more to defend the name than to simply rename their product line. I bet that if the average consumer had been asked about the an iPhone before MacWorld that almost all of those asked would have associated the product with Apple, not Cisco.

As a small footnote, Cisco still sells their iPhone. You can find it at Amazon.com, amongst other places.