Cisco SVP Mark Chandler weighs in on iPhone debacle
Rumors are rampant as to just what Cisco wanted from Apple in exchange for some trademark sharing, and now Mark Chandler, SVP of Cisco, has weighed in with his own take on the situation. Apparently Cisco wasn't hitting up Apple for cash, asking for royalties or hedging for an IT contract -- or at least none of those were "issues at the table" and keeping them from an agreement, so there's always the slight chance a couple such bribes were already givens. Apparently what Cisco was actually out for was an "open approach," with Apple opening up its iPhone enough to allow interoperability with Cisco's offering. "We wanted to make sure to differentiate the brands in a way that could work for both companies and not confuse people, since our products combine both web access and voice telephony." Mark's argument is that with the aggressive way Apple tends to protect its IP, even to the point of bragging about the 200+ patents in the iPhone that it plans on protecting, Apple should do Cisco more courtesy than announcing an iPhone without wrapping up talks in actual licensing -- talks which were apparently "substantive" as late as 8pm on Monday, when Cisco made its final demands. No word on how this is going forward, but it's clear something's gotta give, and Cisco's 11-year-old trademark sure looks to have the upper hand.
[Via Techmeme]
