New Twist in Apple-Cisco iPhone Spat

By NewsFactor Network | January 25, 2007

As Cisco charges forward with its trademark claim against Apple over use of the name “iPhone,” some members of the open-source community are accusing Cisco of an iPhone-related trademark violation of its own.

Armijn Hemel, an open-source software researcher with the GNU Violations Project, a group that identifies public misuses of the General Public License (GPL), accused Cisco last week of failing to publish all of the source code in the WIP300 Linux-based iPhone model to the open-source community, as required.

Cisco has responded to the claims. “Based on our investigation, Cisco is taking steps to resolve a single issue raised regarding this product’s compliance with the GNU General Public License,” John Earnhardt, a Cisco senior manager, wrote in a company blog posting. “Cisco has thoroughly investigated the other issues raised and verified the product’s compliance with the GPL.”

Publicity Stunt?

Although Cisco has admitted its error, legal analysts said the company’s issues with the GPL are irrelevant to its trademark claims against Apple. Cisco, which owns the iPhone trademark, claims Apple’s use of the name for its new mobile phone will confuse customers. Apple maintains that it is the first company to use the term iPhone to apply to a cell phone.

According to Michael R. Graham, an intellectual property attorney and partner with Marshall, Gerstein & Borun in Chicago, Hemel’s claim that Cisco is violating the GPL is a “bizarre case of an open-source proselytizer mixing apples with oranges in order to gain publicity.”

Graham went on to say that Hemel’s decision to announce the Cisco breach at this time reveals that his motive is free publicity through the Cisco-Apple trademark controversy. “However,” he said, “the rights protected by copyright law, and made open by the GNU, and those protected by trademark law, are entirely unrelated and do not reflect upon…

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