Apple and Cisco Still Negotiating Over iPhone

Cisco Systems Inc. has announced that it will be giving Apple more time to respond to the lawsuit over the iPhone trademark, extending negotiations for the second time.

"Cisco has agreed to give Apple an extension until Wednesday, February 21," Cisco said in a statement. "Cisco is fully committed to using the extra time to reach a mutually beneficial resolution."

Cisco obtained the iPhone trademark in 2000, after their acquisition of a company called Infogear, which has sold devices called iPhones for several years and owned the trademark.

Since the acquisition, Cisco has not actively used the name until its division Linksys introduced their new wireless products named iPhone in December last year. Needless to say, Cisco claims it owns the trademark and decided to sue Apple just a day after the iPhone's unveiling at the MacWorld Expo in San Francisco. Mainly Cisco declared that it wanted to keep Apple from "infringing upon and deliberately copying and using" the trademark and has also called for "interoperabillity".

On January the 31st, Apple and Cisco returned to negotiating over the iPhone, with Apple having to respond to the infringement suite until February the 15th.

Well, looks like that was not enough time for Apple, since Cisco has announced that it is agreeing to extend negotiations again, until February the 21st. Since more information is definitely going to pop out just a few days from now, when Apple will think time is over, we'll just have to wait until then to find out if they've finally reached an agreement or not.