Cisco CEO on Apple suit

Cisco CEO John Chambers described the company's lawsuit against Apple as a "minor skirmish," saying that the iPhone name-related confrontation could have been avoided if Apple had been willing to negotiate. Cisco owned the 'iPhone' trademark since 2000 when it acquired a firm that had registered the name, but waited to use the name until it launched a Linksys-branded product. "We told Apple for five years, 'This is our trademark. We'll license it to you, but it is ours,'" Chambers said. "All we ask is that people respect our trademarks and our intellectual property. We would have traded that for just interoperability, or the ability of the Apple phone to work smoothly with Cisco products." Cisco's chief also said that his company normally resolved trademark disputes "very smoothly," but that Apple has become difficult to deal with, according to the International Herald Tribune.

by MacNN Staff