Apple, Inc. Now Owns the Letter 'i'

So, the monument to Steve Jobs's ego which is Apple, Inc. (no longer "Apple Computer, Inc." because they finally realized that they're not in the computer business) is laying claim to the name "iPhone", despite that being a registered trademark owned by Cisco (who owns Linksys, and who bought InfoGear, who have been marketing their internet phone for a while now).

Let's ask the suit why they think Apple can get away with this:

the name iPhone "has been associated with Apple and the concept of a phone for a couple of years," says Charles Golvin, a tech analyst at Forrester Research.

Uh-huh. InfoGear has been selling its iPhone since Y2K, which is longer than the iPod has existed. Let's try again:

Apple has a line of products with "i" in the name, including the iBook laptop and iPod digital music player.

I work for iRobot. Across the street from our office is iBasis. Compaq (since bought by Hewlett Packard) had the iPaq while Apple was still putting different colors of chassis on its iMac.

So unless Apple can manage to prove in court that they now own the letter 'i' (at least while used as a prefix), I'd say that the almighty ego of Jobs is going to take a major hit.

The fact that this new "iPhone" is going to be a $600/unit flop is another issue altogether.

RAW

Robert Anton Wilson has escaped!

Coming soon to a parallel universe near you.