TELECOM Digest     Fri, 12 Jan 2007 01:28:00 EST    Volume 26 : Issue 12

Inside This Issue:                            Editor: Patrick A. Townson

    Cisco Sues Apple Over iPhone Name (Rachel Konrad)
    NY Times Plans Major Job Cutback (Reuters News Wire)
    CommunicationsDirect News Daily Update (communicationsdirect_daily)
    Re: Article: T1 Connections Provide Unparalleled Data Transfer (RJ)
    Re: Article: T1 Connections Provide Unparalleled Data Transfer (Sam Spade)
    Re: Off Topic: Teens Same Worldwide: [Movie, Texting] (Earle Robinson)

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Date: Thu, 11 Jan 2007 23:58:18 -0600
From: Rachel Konrad, AP  <ap@telecom-digest.org>
Subject: Cisco Sues Apple Over iPhone Name


By RACHEL KONRAD, AP Technology Writer

What's a name worth? To find out, Cisco Systems Inc. and Apple
Inc. may spend millions of dollars in a high-stakes legal battle --
and the winner could walk away with the rights to the coveted name
"iPhone."

In a lawsuit filed Wednesday, Cisco asked a judge to forbid Apple from
using the name "iPhone," a Cisco trademark since 2000. The case hinges
in part on whether Apple's phone -- a sleek, $499 gizmo unveiled
Tuesday to much fanfare -- could confuse shoppers looking to buy
Cisco's iPhones.

Attorneys specializing in intellectual property said Thursday that Cisco 
will likely win, if the case goes to court.

"Cisco's argument will hold water," said David Radack, chairman of the
intellectual property department at Pittsburgh-based Eckert Seamans
Cherin & Mellott LLC. "It'd be like if I sold spark plugs, then
someone else said I'm going to sell carburetors with the same
name. Yeah, they're different products -- but they're both sold in
auto parts stores, and someone who saw the brand name on a spark plug
could reasonably think it was made by the same company."

Last spring, Cisco began selling a line of bulky but inexpensive
iPhones that make free long-distance calls over the Internet, a
technology known as Voice-over Internet Protocol. Amazon.com sells
them for as little as $12, though they require extra software and
hardware and are usually sold in kits that start around $70 and can
cost $200 or more.

Apple's iPhone is a sleek cellular gadget that delivers e-mail, Web
sites, music and movies over the Cingular Wireless network. Apple's
iPhone will be available in June for $499 or $599 for a version with
more memory.

Earlier this week, Apple spokeswoman Natalie Kerris called the lawsuit 
"silly," and Apple senior vice president Phil Schiller said other 
companies have tried to use the name for VoIP phones -- but only Apple's 
iPhone is a cellular phone.

Despite that distinction, attorneys are curious about what defense
Apple may offer, noting that the high-profile case could become the
most closely watched naming skirmish since 1989, when Mead Data
Central Inc.  -- owner of the Lexis legal database -- sued Toyota
Motor Corp. over its Lexus luxury brand.

Cisco's trademark with the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office describes
"computer hardware and software for providing integrated telephone
communication with computerized global information networks."

According to the lawsuit, Apple's iPhone is "deceptively and
confusingly similar" to Cisco's -- and, as technology advances, both
phones could someday operate on the same networks and assume
similarities in the user interface, hardware or software.

Cisco is asking Apple to pay Cisco's legal fees and relinquish all
profits eventually made on the iPhone. Cisco also demands Apple
destroy all labels, signs, packaging and other promotional material
that includes the word "iPhone," a product it cost Apple millions to
develop.

Apple first asked Cisco in 2001 to acquire or license rights to the
name. When Cisco declined, Apple embarked on a campaign of "confusion,
mistake and deception" in its effort to secure the rights, the lawsuit
claims.

Apple went so far as to create a phony company -- called Ocean Telecom
Services LLC -- to get around Cisco's trademark, Cisco alleges.

In an application to the U.S. Patent and Trade Office in March, Ocean
Telecom billed itself as a foreign company doing business in Trinidad
and Tobago. The company listed its attorney as James Johnson. His
contact information was an e-mail address from Google's free Web-based
gmail service.

On Thursday, the Apple spokeswoman said the company would not discuss
Ocean Telecom.

No one responded to an e-mail that The Associated Press sent to James
Johnson's e-mail account.

Despite harsh words in the lawsuit, Cisco spokesman John Noh said
Cisco's attorneys are still willing to negotiate with Apple. He
emphasized that Cisco -- the most richly valued company in Silicon
Valley, with a market capitalization of more than $174 billion --
never wanted Apple to pay cash for naming rights.

Rather, Noh said, Cisco executives wanted to let Apple use the word
"iPhone" on the condition that both companies' phones could
communicate with each other. He would not provide technical details.

"This is not about money. We were seeking to work closely with Apple
to make our devices more interoperable," Noh said Thursday. "Cell
phones, work phones, home phones, personal computers -- they're all
converging.  The value of that convergence is limitless, and the key
to that is industrywide interoperability. It's a core tenets to our
business."

Barry Cohen, a partner in the Philadelphia office of Thorp Reed &
Armstrong, said Cisco had a strong argument. Judges usually allow
products from different companies to share the same name only when
they're starkly dissimilar -- Delta Airlines and Delta Faucet, for
instance.

"Those are clearly two businesses that don't overlap, except for maybe
the bathroom in an airplane," Cohen said.

Judges also consider possible expansions of the product lines in
determining whether trademark infringement occurred. Another factor is
intent -- did the company not know of another with a similar name?
That can't be the case with Apple, which first approached Cisco about
the name nearly six years ago.

Apple may argue that the word "iPhone" is so generic and broad it
should not be trademarked at all. Numerous English words have become
so pervasive -- aspirin, escalator and elevator, for instance -- that
they've lost trademark protection. (Apple has aggressively defended
the word "iPod," sending threatening legal notices to people who use
the word to mean any type of digital music player.)

"The problem with the genericness argument is that, if Apple goes that
route, the next day Nokia could come out with an iPhone, and I can't
imagine that would go over well with Apple," Cohen said.

If Ocean Telecom is the "alter-ego" for Apple and applied for the
trademark, as Cisco suggests, that could undercut the argument that
the name is not worthy of trademark protection.

It's unclear why executives couldn't settle their naming skirmish. 
Grace Han Stanton, a trademark expert and partner in the Seattle
office of Perkins Coie LLP, said Apple executives were likely
anticipating the lawsuit long before they launched the iPhone Tuesday.

"Why choose iPhone when there's a known conflict? Maybe they wanted
the media frenzy," Stanton said. "This added a lot of fuel to the
iPhone fire."

Peter Morici, business professor at the University of Maryland,
acknowledged that both companies have ample resources for a
multi-million-dollar court battle -- but why? Apple's marketing
staff is among the most talented in corporate America and should be
able to come up with a catchy new name.

"Apple doesn't need this lawsuit," Morici said. "A new, creative
moniker would be a wise strategy."

Copyright 2007 The Associated Press. 

NOTE: For more telecom/internet/networking/computer news from the
daily media, check out our feature 'Telecom Digest Extra' each day at
http://telecom-digest.org/td-extra/more-news.html . Hundreds of new
articles daily. And, discuss this and other topics in our forum at
http://telecom-digest.org/forum (or)
http://telecom-digest.org/chat/index.html

------------------------------

Date: Thu, 11 Jan 2007 20:09:05 -0600
From: Reuters News Wire <reuters@telecom-digest.org>
Subject: NY Times Plans Major Job Cutback


NY Times Co to cut 125 jobs

The New York Times Co. said on Thursday it aims to cut about 125 jobs at 
its New England Media Group, including 19 editorial staff at the Boston 
Globe, through voluntary buyouts and outsourcing.

The Globe's publisher Steve Ainsley said in a letter to employees that 
the buyouts would be offered in the first quarter to employees with at 
least 10 or more years at the Globe and at Worcester Telegram and 
Gazette, both of which are New England Media Group properties.

A spokesman for New England Media Group said the voluntary buyouts would 
be offered to 70 newsroom employees, whose positions will not be 
replaced. About 55 more people will be offered buyouts; their positions 
will be outsourced.

There are 412 newsroom employees at the Globe and about 2,300 employees 
in the group, a spokesman said, adding that the company will reassess if 
it needs to make involuntary layoffs depending on how many employees 
take up the offer.

The outsourcing effort, aimed at cutting costs, would begin in the 
finance and advertising departments, with finance changes expected to be 
completed by May, he said.

The job cuts do not affect Boston.com, his letter said.

The New York Times, like many other newspaper publishers, is trying to 
cut costs as advertising revenue and circulation decline as a result of 
more readers moving to the Internet and other media to get their news.

Wall Street Journal publisher Dow Jones & Co. Inc. plans to eliminate 
nearly two dozen jobs at its Newswires and Factiva divisions in advance 
of a restructuring, a union representative for company employees told 
Reuters on Tuesday.

"You know as well as anyone that we are in the middle of one of the
most challenging periods in our history. Even though we have the
potential to reach larger audiences through the combination of print,
online and emerging platforms such as mobile, we still face tough
advertising and circulation markets," Ainsley said in his letter.

"One of the first steps we will be taking is to significantly reduce
costs to bring them into line with our revenue expectations," he said.

Ainsley added that there would be more steps taken to improve
efficiency and address audience and advertiser growth.

Globe editor Martin Baron said in a memo to employees that the
editorial department aimed to cut 17 news jobs and two on the opinion
pages. Some openings would also be frozen.

"These reductions also come at a time when we must fully transform our
newsroom into a multimedia news and information organization. That in
itself makes demands on our time and resources. Our jobs will be
different. But it is a challenge we must meet if we are to thrive in
the future," Baron said.

Copyright 2007 Reuters Limited. 

NOTE: For more telecom/internet/networking/computer news from the
daily media, check out our feature 'Telecom Digest Extra' each day at
http://telecom-digest.org/td-extra/more-news.html . Hundreds of new
articles daily. And, discuss this and other topics in our forum at
http://telecom-digest.org/forum (or)
http://telecom-digest.org/chat/index.html

For more news and headlines, please go to:
http://telecom-digest.org/td-extra/newstoday.html

------------------------------

Subject: CommunicationsDirect News Daily Update - January 11, 2007
From: communicationsdirect <communicationsdirect@communicationsdirect.com>
Reply-To: communicationsdirect_daily-owner@communicationsdirectnews.com
Date: Thu, 11 Jan 2007 11:39:35 EST


********************************
PricewaterhouseCoopers Presents
The CommunicationsDirect News Daily Update
For January 11, 2007
********************************

Motorola, Siemens Win Public Network Contract in Norway
http://www.communicationsdirectnews.com/do.php/140/22025?11228

     The Norwegian national public safety radio network, Nodnett, has
     selected U.S. telecoms equipment vendor Motorola and German
     electronic equipment maker Siemens for the implementation of a
     nationwide network. According to the terms of the deal, Siemens
     will coordinate the project, while Motorola will supply core
     network infrastructure, ...

Where Can the MVNO Model Succeed?
http://www.communicationsdirectnews.com/do.php/140/22020?11228

     It was a big blow to the telecom industry when ESPN announced that it
     was pulling the plug on its MVNO business. If ESPN, with the No. 1
     male brand name in the country, can't make it as a content-based
     MVNO, then who can? Almost every major newspaper and trade pub
     has commented on the ESPN failure. In a nutshell, ESPN had ...

Next-Gen Offers Adopt Classic Feature Sets
http://www.communicationsdirectnews.com/do.php/150/22017?11228

     While VoIP can offer cost savings and productivity-enhancing
     tools, business customers -- particularly the small ones -- are
     less than eager to part with features of their familiar -- albeit
     outdated -- key systems, PBXs or Centrex services. With this in
     mind, hosted and software-based IP PBX vendors are beginning to
     roll out offers that ...

Cisco Files iPhone Suit
http://www.communicationsdirectnews.com/do.php/130/22011?11228

     Releasing a major downpour on Steve Jobs' iPhone parade, Cisco
     Systems Inc. said late today that it has filed suit against
     Apple Inc. for trademark infringement for use of the
     'iPhone' brand. Cisco has owned the iPhone marque
     since it acquired Infogear in 2000 as part of its Linksys division.
     Infogear ...

FCC to Comcast: 'No Waiver for You'
http://www.communicationsdirectnews.com/do.php/130/22008?11228

     LAS VEGAS -- Consumer Electronics Show (CES) -- The Federal
     Communications Commission (FCC) appears determined to enforce its
     rules requiring cable operators and consumer electronics makers
     to use the same type of separable security in set-top boxes and
     cable-ready TVs.  On Wednesday night the Commission announced it
     had denied a ...

Cingular Sees iPhone as Path to Growth
http://www.communicationsdirectnews.com/do.php/120/22006?11228

     As the exclusive U.S. partner for the newly introduced iPhone,
     Cingular Wireless believes adding the multimedia phone to its
     portfolio will help draw in new subscribers and boost revenue.
     The companies, which bring different corporate cultures to the
     table, began working on a partnership 2 years ago, according to
     Glenn Lurie, ...

On The Hill: Net Neutrality, Round Two
http://www.communicationsdirectnews.com/do.php/130/22004?11228

     It didn't take Sens. Byron Dorgan (D-N.D.) and Olympia Snowe
     (R-Maine) long to reintroduce network-neutrality legislation. How
     much momentum it picks up remains to be seen, though the
     net-neutrality champions were quick to get on board.      The two are
     members of the Senate Commerce Committee, which will have
     legislative ...

http://www.communicationsdirectnews.com/unsubscribe.php?c527f79b6e8cadaf376=
fd8d713d675f9

CommunicationsDirect Editor <telecom_direct_editor@us.pwc.com>

Copyright (C) 2007 PricewaterhouseCoopers.

------------------------------

From: RJ <rj_nospam@hotmail.com>
Subject: Re: Article: T1 Connections Provide Unparalleled Data Transfer Speeds
Date: Thu, 11 Jan 2007 00:18:51 -0500


On 9 Jan 2007 17:22:34 -0800, FreedomFireCom <melemm@cognisurf.com>
wrote:

> For most business seeking high speed internet access for data transfer
> applications ... a T1 connection is the solution of choice over DSL.
> This article explains why ... and how.

>  http://broadband-nation.blogspot.com/2007/01/t1-connections-provide-unparalleled.html

This article fails to point out the vastly more expensive rates for
T1.

T1 gives you total privacy and 24/7 capacity.  If you don't need both
of those things, almost anything other than T1 is a better deal.

RJ

------------------------------

From: Sam Spade <Sam@coldmail.com>
Subject: Re: Article: T1 Connections Provide Unparalleled Data Transfer
Date: Wed, 10 Jan 2007 18:24:06 -0800
Organization: Cox


That article is so biased and incompete to defy comprehension.

My cable broadband is faster than that 1970s' T-1 balony.

Now, let's talk t-3 at reasonable rates.  (not about to happen, is it)

FreedomFireCom wrote:

> For most business seeking high speed internet access for data transfer
> applications ... a T1 connection is the solution of choice over DSL.
> This article explains why ... and how.

>   http://broadband-nation.blogspot.com/2007/01/t1-connections-provide-unparalleled.html

> God Bless,
> Michael Lemm
> FreedomFire Communications
> "Helping YOUR Business....DO Business"
> http://DS3-Bandwidth.com
> http://www.linkedin.com/in/freedomfirecom

------------------------------

From: earle robinson <earle@notchur.biz>
Subject: Re: Off Topic: Teens Same Worldwide: [Movie, Texting, Cell Phones]
Date: Thu, 11 Jan 2007 16:12:44 +0100


Please mask my email address.  Thank you.

In fact, there has been no problem in getting a phone line in France since
the early 1970s. It is quite true that the French phone system became one of
the best in the 1970s, this because it was completely rebuilt. Until then it
was a third world system.

Today, there are more people with broadband, cell phones and voip than in
the usa, based on per capital. While the usa has been advanced in many ways,
in some France has been better. I might add that the other phone companies
in Europe were also rebuilt in the 70s and 80s and are all more reliable
than in the states.


   -er

------------------------------


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End of TELECOM Digest V26 #12
*****************************