short apple long cisco. ya think?

Maybe Steven P. Jobs should have named his new gadget the Apple Phone instead of the iPhone. Or maybe the real winners will be the intellectual property lawyers.

In any case, just a day after acknowledging that they had been discussing rights to the iPhone trademark with Apple “extensively” in recent weeks, Apple’s Silicon Valley neighbor, the computer networking giant Cisco Systems, filed a trademark infringement lawsuit in United States District Court against Apple, claiming rights to the iPhone brand.

On Tuesday, after Mr. Jobs had unveiled the iPhone to much fanfare, Cisco issued a statement saying that Apple had been in negotiations to obtain the trademark for several weeks and had been asking for “permission” to use it since 2001. Cisco recently introduced a WiFi-based phone with the same name.

On Wednesday, however, Cisco went to court to stop Apple, and its lawyer said the two companies had been unable to reach an agreement over several “principles” that Cisco had been demanding to permit Apple to use the trademark.

“The action we’ve taken is about protecting our brand,” said Mark Chandler, Cisco’s general counsel.

Cisco would have been willing to share the trademark, he said, if Apple had agreed to its terms, which involved a commitment to interoperability on Apple’s part and an agreement to differentiate the two products in the market.

On Wednesday evening, Apple fired back by noting that several companies besides Cisco were currently using the iPhone brand name. A quick Web search reveals that Comwave, Nuvio and Teledex are all using the brand in different ways.

“We believe that Cisco’s U.S. trademark is tenuous at best,” said Katie Cotton, Apple’s vice president for worldwide communications. “We are the first company to use the iPhone name for a cellphone and we’re confident we will prevail.”

In its lawsuit, Cisco said that the company had obtained the iPhone trademark in 2000 when it acquired InfoGear, a company in Redwood City, Calif., that developed consumer-oriented Internet appliances. Mr. Chandler said Cisco began selling an iPhone product last spring and introduced the product publicly at the end of 2006.

InfoGear began selling iPhone products as early as 1997. According to the lawsuit, the original iPhone was a device that combined a telephone and a dial-up Internet portal.

The lawsuit describes a “surreptitious” Apple attempt to obtain the rights to the iPhone name. In September 2006, a corporation calling itself Ocean Telecom Services filed an application for the trademark based on an earlier filing in Trinidad and Tobago. That same month, Apple separately filed an application to use the trademark in Australia.

In the lawsuit, Cisco states that it believes that Ocean Telecom Services is a front corporation for Apple. Ms. Cotton declined to comment on whether Apple is related to the company.

Apple decided to use the iPhone brand despite its earlier decision to switch the name of its digital video system from iTV to Apple TV. When asked during an interview if Apple Phone would have been a better brand choice for the new wireless phone, Mr. Jobs said he liked the iPhone brand.

Apple has prevailed in other sticky trademark disputes. Last May a British court ruled in Apple’s favor against Apple Records, the Beatles’ Apple Corps recording label.

On Tuesday, Mr. Jobs appeared to take a step toward consolidating his hold over the Apple brand when he shortened Apple’s name by dropping the word “computer.”