Bells, whistles and lawsuits mark iPhone launch

Certainly, it\'s been almost impossible to open a newspaper without spotting the shiny new phone over the past week. E-Brief News reports that the announcement didn\'t really surprise anyone, but it has sparked a furious debate about a gadget that will allow you to e-mail, surf the Internet, take pictures, play music, watch TV shows and films and make phone calls. The new instrument, which will be released in 4GB and 8GB versions, cost the company millions of dollars in top-secret development. But the sleek new iPod-cellphone combination could wind up costing the company a lot more. Cisco Systems, the world\'s largest networking-equipment manufacturer, has sued Apple in a San Francisco Federal Court, claiming that the iPhone violates its trademark. According to a report on the IoL site, Cisco is asking the court to forbid Apple from using the name \'iPhone\', which Cisco has held a trademark on since 2000 and used to brand a line of its own Internet-enabled phones that officially launched three weeks ago. BBC News reports that Apple responded by saying the lawsuit was \'silly\' and that Cisco\'s trademark registration was \'tenuous at best\'. Cisco, which supplies networks, said it would seek to stop Apple from \'infringing upon and deliberately copying and using\' the trademark. However, Out-Law.com reports that Cisco could be on the brink of losing the rights to the iPhone trademark in Europe, according to trademark experts. Apple could end up with European rights to iPhone, in contrast to reports around the world suggesting that Cisco\'s rights were absolute. Trademark specialist Lee Curtis has found a legal loophole, which could strip Cisco of its European rights. He said in Europe a person can lodge a revocation application against a trademark registration if the trademark has not been used for the past five years. Just such a revocation was lodged by a German law firm, CMS, on exactly the same day (18 December 2006) on which Cisco launched the iPhone. Full report on the IoL site Full BBC News report Full OutLaw.com report

Apple has wasted no time in cracking the whip over its new instrument. Lawyers for the company have already sued a hacker who copied the screen icons from the new iPhone and created a programme that installs them on other phones. FIN24 reports that the programme, quickly dubbed iPhony, was created by Paul O\'Brien, founder of MoDaCo, who posted an iPhone skin for Windows Mobile-based phones and promptly received a cease and desist letter from Apple. Apple is notoriously litigious, but its lawyers must be working overtime at the moment, as they try to stop people seeing the iPhone\'s icons misused. That\'s according to a blog on The Guardian site which states that a few users decided to \'borrow\' the icons for use on their Treo, Windows Mobile or other smart phone, most of which already have the same features as the iPhone. Jack Schofield writes that whenever someone installs one of these backdrops, they are going to show it to their friends and basically that\'s going to constitute free promotion for Apple\'s product. \'But as we know from 25 years\' experience, Apple will always defend its intellectual property to the death. The problem is that Apple\'s lawyers are not just using their legal jackboots against people posting iPhone-style skins, they\'re using them against people reporting the case.’ Full FIN24 report Read the full blog on The Guardian site

Staying with iPhone issues, the gadget\'s music-playing function will be limited by factory-installed \'crippleware.\' If \'crippleware\' seems an unduly harsh description, it balances the euphemistic names that the industry uses for copy protection. The New York Times reports that Apple officially calls its own standard \'FairPlay,\' but fair it is not. The term \'crippleware\' comes from the plaintiff in a class-action lawsuit, Melanie Tucker v. Apple Computer Inc, which is making its way through Federal District Court in Northern California. The suit contends that Apple unfairly restricts consumer choice because it does not load onto the iPod the software needed to play music that uses Microsoft’s copy-protection standard, in addition to Apple’s own. Full report in The New York Times