The Cisco CEO called the lawsuit with Apple over the trademarked “iPhone” name a “minor skirmish” that could have been avoided if they had negotiated early as discussed.

In my opinion, this isn’t just a minor skirmish, it is a BFD. It’s not like Apple came up with a unique name and some mom and pop came out of the woodwork to claim the name. This is Cisco! Any basic desktop search would have pulled up Cisco’s trademark. This is an example of Steve and Co. brazenly claiming something unclaimable and then trying to muscle its way into it.

“All we ask is that people respect our trademarks and our intellectual property,” he told the paper. “We would have traded that for just interoperability,” or the ability of the Apple phone to work smoothly with Cisco products.”

See, that’s just it. Apple doesn’t want interoperability. It’s not a criticism, past decisions prove it be a point.
[Via Reuters]