I’ve been corresponding recently with Adam Richardson, Strategy Director at Palo Alto based frog design. Turns out he worked for a startup company called Infogear in the late 90s and was part of the team that designed its first product, a desktop phone/email/web affair with a VGA black and white touch screen, a speedy 56k modem and a slide-out keyboard.
Like quite a few PC/phone/appliance gadgets (Webphones) at the time, it seemed a good idea but ultimately collapsed under the weight of high cost relative to rapidly falling prices of full-blown PC’s that did a lot more. Infogear struggled and was ultimately acquired by Cisco Systems in 2000. With it, Cisco inherited the trademark on the devise’s name: iPhone.
So now you know how Cisco ended up with the iPhone trademark or, as the saying goes, “the rest of the story.”