Apple and Cisco announced yesterday that they have inked a Settlement Agreement on the use of the iPhone trademark.  Under the agreement, both companies are free to use the iPhone trademark on their products throughout the world.  Pending lawsuits will be dismissed. 

For the two companies to use the same trademark in the same channel of trade and still maintain distinctiveness for the purposes of trademark law they will have to tread carefully: Cisco could license the use of the trademark to Apple, or Apple could license it to Cisco or they could set up a separate holding company to own the trademark and license it out to both companies.  Financial details are confidential, so we can only speculate about the price Apple had to pay for coming late to this trademark game.

Calgary – 15:46 MST