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February 22, 2007
Cisco and Apple - part 2
As a follow up to an earlier posting, Apple and Cisco have reached a settlement. According to WSJ.com:
Under their agreement, Cisco, of San Jose, Calif., and Apple, of Cupertino, Calif., are free to use the iPhone trademark on their respective products throughout the world. Cisco will drop a lawsuit it filed against Apple in federal court in San Francisco, accusing Apple of infringing on a Cisco trademark with a forthcoming cellphone called the iPhone, due out in June.
In a joint statement, Apple and Cisco said they will explore opportunities for making their products work better together "in the areas of security, and consumer and enterprise communications." The companies said other terms of the settlement are confidential, declining to comment further.
The agreement may be a win-win. As the AP reports (Cisco, Apple settle 'iPhone' dispute - Yahoo! News):
Analysts said the settlement announced late Wednesday in Cisco's trademark-infringement lawsuit could help both companies strengthen their positions in the increasingly fierce battle to deliver video and other applications directly to consumers' homes.
Zeus Kerravala, a network infrastructure analyst with Yankee Group, said there are ample opportunities for the companies to dream up collaborative projects to win over consumers.
One possibility, he said, could be a device from Cisco's Linksys division that users call into to record podcasts that are then automatically uploaded to iTunes. Such a product would make it easier to create and disseminate such programs.
Negotiations win out once again.
Posted by Ken Jarboe at February 22, 2007 8:24 AM
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