Cisco and Apple call iPhone truce

Cisco Systems Inc has called its legal attack dogs off Apple Inc, saying that the two companies have agreed that they can both use the iPhone brand to market their telephones.

The deal includes a vague agreement to explore opportunities for interoperability in the areas of security, and consumer and enterprise communications.

Cisco will stop suing Apple for trademark infringement. The company filed suit on January 10, the day after Apple's Steve Jobs launched its iPhone marketing campaign at the Macworld show in San Francisco.

Cisco said it owned the iPhone mark through its 2000 acquisition InfoGear Technology Corp in 2000. InfoGear had used the brand as far bas as 1997, but Cisco did not resurrect it until relatively recently, when it started slapping it on Linksys-branded phones.

The settlement is an obvious boon to Apple, which was hoping to leverage its successful iPod brand to sell its take on iPhones, which will play music and video and provide internet access as well as making calls. An ugly lawsuit and potential injunction and damages have been avoided.

It's also quite useful to Cisco, which gets to associate its distinctly less sexy devices with what may turn out to be a successful Apple branding campaign.

What's less clear right now is which company stands to gain most from the interoperability part of the relationship.

Apple's iPhone, like other Apple products, is intended to be a closed system, not extensible by third party developers. It seems debateable that this settlement will carve out an exception for Cisco.

The companies did not respond to requests for elaboration yesterday.

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