File this under ‘WC’ for ‘Who Cares?’ Apple, the one that 70% of the world’s population has heard of thanks to its advertising and its iPod, has brushed aside a legal challenge from Cisco over the ‘iPhone’ label. Cisco would have had a good case were it not for the fact that nobody had ever heard of its iPhone.

Apple’s current success is based on a coming together of music and the Internet and now it is conducting patent and trademark wars with both camps.

True, nobody ever got fired for requesting a Cisco ‘iPhone’. They got sent straight to the sanatorium instead. Like its Cisco predecessor, there is every chance that Apple’s iPhone will sink without trace. It has yet to begin pulling up trees, let alone telephone poles.

The fact that this all arises just days after Apple Inc settled a long-running dispute with Apple Corp (younger readers: they published The Beatles) is quite sweet. There is no truth in the rumour that when the verdict was announced, the judge found in favour of a bunch of bearded old hippies. At which point the remaining Beatles immediately appealed the verdict.
Jim Chalmers