Apple hits 2 billion song downloads, 1 snag with iPhone
Apple Inc. announced that more than two billion songs, 50 million television episodes and more than 1.3 million feature-length films have been purchased and downloaded from its online iTunes Store. The milestone celebrations were dampened somewhat when Cisco Systems announced it was suing Apple for infringing its iPhone trademark.
Apple CEO Steve Jobs told attendees at last week’s MacWorld 2007 conference that the electronics manufacturer and online retailer sold more than 1 billion songs since the beginning of 2006. He also laid claim to being the largest online video store in the world by virtue of selling more than 1.3 million movies.
Apple asserts it iTunes Store has more than 4 million songs and just added 100 movies from Paramount Pictures priced at $9.95 each. Apple is No. 15 in the Internet Retailer Top 500 Guide to Retail Web Sites.
Apple’s announcement that it has merged iPod and cell phone technology into the iPhone was met this week with a lawsuit from Cisco Systems Inc. The computer networking vendor claims that it holds rights to the name since acquiring the iPhone trademark in 2000 on completing the acquisition of Infogear, which previously owned the trademark and sold iPhone products for several years.
Linksys, a division of Cisco, has been shipping iPhone products since early last year, according to Cisco executives. Apple was aware of the ownership issue, Cisco charges.
“Cisco entered into negotiations with Apple in good faith after Apple repeatedly asked permission to use Cisco’s iPhone name,” says Mark Chandler, senior vice president and general counsel at Cisco. "There is no doubt that Apple’s new phone is very exciting, but they should not be using our trademark without our permission.”
The lawsuit was filed in the United States District Court for the Northern District of California, seeking to prevent Apple from “infringing upon and deliberately copying and using Cisco’s registered iPhone trademark.”
Apple did not respond to a request for comment on the suit.
David Moriarty, director of data mining at Apple, will speak at the Internet Retailer Conference & Exhibition, June 4-7 in San Jose in a session titled Mastering E-Payments & Web Security.
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