Apple and Cisco share an iPhone trademark, but not iPhone.com

Both the Wall Street Journal and the New York Times today reported that Apple and Cisco have come to an agreement to share the iPhone name. Neither company disclosed terms, but overall, the consensus seems to be that both companies got what they wanted. We assume the lawyers have been sent home, and everyone is happy.

Now, we here at Blackfriars believe that a good round of Kumbaya beats going to court every day of the week. But we also believe that Cisco and Apple should think a little bit about Internet marketing as well. Using the extensive resources available to us here at Blackfriars World-Wide Headquarters, we took the liberty of researching where iPhone.com might take us on the Internet. It turns out that the domain name was registered via GoDaddy.com, and you can imagine our surprise when we typed iphone.com into our browser and arrived at the Nuvio Web site, a company that sells Voice Over IP (VOIP) services. Now given that Cisco's iPhone is a device that uses VOIP services, there is clearly an opportunity for some confusion here, especially since Nuvio bills itself as "The Internet Phone Company." Perhaps they shouldn't have sent the lawyers home quite so soon after all.

P.S. Cisco does have iPhone.net registered, so at least someone there thought a bit about the Internet branding before this dispute started.

Technorati Tags: Apple, Brand, Branding, Cisco, iPhone, Naming, Nuvio, Trademarks