Cisco beats Apple to releasing iPhone

CISCO HAS activated an old trademark and released its own cell phone called the iPhone.

According to Business Weak, while many Apple fans were waiting for his holiness Steve Jobs to announce Apple's iPhone in January, the last thing they were expecting was for Cisco to release one with the same name.

Apparently Cisco's Linksys unit registered the iPhone as a trademark for a Web-enabled telephone handset designed to work with Internet calling services. It has owned the trademark since 2000 when it acquired Infogear, which had registered it in 1996.

In fact the first iPhone was shown off at the Consumer Electronics Show in Las Vegas in 1997.

This could cause problems for Apple, which has been buying up website domain names for the imminent release of its iPhone product. As could be expected, Apple is not making any comment about the release. µ

L'INQ
Business Week