Julian Ivan-Alexander

Four Big Tech Companies That Should Age Gracefully - Barron's

AAPL isn't "aging." Its growing at 30-40% YoY, and will continue doing so for the next 3-4 years.
HPQ? Doomed to middle age, laucklustre growth, and falling margins.
MSFT? Well past its prime, circa 7 years ago. Coincidentally about the same time DELL peaked.
CSCO? Undervalued, good solid play, but no sprinter.
The only growth story here is AAPL. Yet AAPL trades at 22x forward earnings. I know where I'd put my money.

Cisco Sues Apple Over iPhone Trademark

The Guardian: AAPL Will Keep Name
By Charles Arthur / Apple 09:47pm

The more we look into this, the more it becomes (as Malcolm Gladwell points out in an excellent New Yorker article) like a mystery, not a puzzle - that is, the answers were all out there already, but needed to be put together. (Gladwell's piece is about Enron. Highly recommended.)

Apple did indeed register the "iPhone" trademark in the US, and it was granted in September 2006. Don't believe us? See this page. Sure, it's down for "Ocean Telecom Services", but the description (not to mention the typography) are all that Apple gear. And as 10layers noted in October, Apple had been filing with the same description all over the world, including the UK.

Now, if you look at the results of a search in the US Patent and Trademark Office for "iPhone", you get 9 results, of which 6 have been abandoned. The only others, besides Apple, are for a hotel internal phone, and Cisco's, which arguably doesn't conflict with the Apple one - the trademark is in a different field, of "computer hardware and software for providing integrated telephone communication with computerized global information networks", not "handheld and mobile digital electronic devices for the sending and receiving of telephone calls, faxes, electronic mail, and other digital data..."

So Apple might squeak through this one without having to shell out to either of the other trademark holders.

Introducing The iPhone... From Cisco

"The really interesting question here is whether the pending Apple cell phones will be able to use the iPhone name without running into trademark issues."

Hmm.. Actually, the really interesting question is: what will Apple call their phone? Bugger the trademark issue - I can guarantee you it won't be called the "iPhone."