Cisco Gives Apple More Time for iPhone Response

Cisco Systems has given Apple a further extension on the deadline to respond to its lawsuit concerning the iPhone name, the company said late Thursday.

Linksys iPhone CIT300

Apple was hit with a trademark infringement lawsuit from Cisco Systems the day after it unveiled a new cell phone under the name iPhone at January’s Macworld Expo in San Francisco. Cisco says its Linksys division owns the trademark on “iPhone” and filed a lawsuit in Federal District Court for Northern California seeking an injunction against Apple using the name.

On Thursday evening, Cisco said it had agreed to a request from Apple for more time.

“Cisco has agreed to give Apple an extension until Wednesday, Feb. 21,” the company said in a brief statement. “Cisco is fully committed to using the extra time to reach a mutually beneficial resolution.”

When Cisco sued Apple on Jan. 10, it revealed that the two companies had been talking about the iPhone name for about two years and were close to a deal on Jan. 8, which was the day before Macworld Expo. When Apple CEO Steve Jobs went ahead on Jan. 9 and announced the phone, he did so before an agreement between the two companies had been reached, and that pushed Cisco to file its lawsuit.

The Apple iPhone

A previous extension was granted Apple by Cisco on Feb. 1, at which time Cisco said it wanted an agreement on “trademark use and interoperability.” Those words lend credibility to earlier media reports that Cisco might back down over the trademark issue if the iPhone were made compatible with its networking gear.

Just how serious Apple views the issue or how close the current talks are to a deal is unknown.

A few days after Apple was hit with the lawsuit, Natalie Kerris, Apple’s director of music public relations, told Macworld that the company thought the lawsuit was “silly.”

Linksys launched its iPhone in late December, just as buzz was building about the possibility of a cell phone and music player combo from Apple coming at Macworld. The Linksys iPhone is a cordless telephone with base station that attaches to the Internet. It allows calls to be made from the handset over Skype without the need for a personal computer.

Apple’s iPhone is a GSM cell phone married with an iPod that runs on Apple’s Mac OS X operating system. The phone is due to be released in the United States in the middle of this year through a deal with Cingular Wireless. Models for international markets are due out sometime after the U.S. launch.

-Martyn Williams, IDG News Service (Tokyo Bureau)

Related Links:

• Cisco Hits Apple With Lawsuit over iPhone Name

• iSuppli: Apple iPhone May Yield More Than 50% Margins

• Why the iPhone Is the Single Most Important Thing to Happen to CIOs This Year

• Why Apple i-Anything Is a Non-Issue for CIOs and Corporate America

Check out our CIO News Alerts and Tech Informer pages for more updated news coverage.