Nortel may sue Apple over iPhone

NOT CONTENT with getting itself into hot water with Cisco over the iPhone name, Apple may find itself in deep water over the use of the term 'Visual Voicemail'.

A product with that name already exists as part of the Voice Office Applications Suite which works in conjunction with Nortel's application gateway.

Nortel's product - which incidentally is resold by Citrix - provides a visual display of the voicemails a company employee might receive. Those voicemails can then be played back using an IP Phone supplied by Nortel.

So in principal, it works exactly the same as the Visual Voicemail facility built into Apple's new iPod phone.

Considering Jobs claims there are at least 200 patents applicable to the handset, you'd have thought somebody would have checked.

The only difference is that Apple's version of Visual Voicemail is designed to work with a voicemail service offered by a cellular operator - Cingular. The INQ wouldn't care to bet that's a first either.

The INQ also doesn't swallow Apple's Greg Joswiak's excuse as to why the phone doesn't support 3G - only EDGE. Joswiak claimed 3G was too much a drain on the handset's battery. And Wi-Fi support isn't, then?

The Apple handset is the handiwork of Brit born, Jonathan Ive who, among other products like toilets and VCRs, designed the iMac; iBook; PowerBook G4; iMac G5; and, of course, the iPod.

Naturally everyone assumes that the Apple handset will follow suite. But Apple's had its share of duffs in the past. Remember the Newton? That concept (the PDA) wasn't refined until the Palm Pilot came along.

Plus, don't forget that other famous Brit inventor, Sir Clive Sinclair. He gave us a string of successful personal computers. And then invented the C5. µ

L'INQ Nortel Visual Voicemail