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Natalie Kerris, Apple's director of Music Public Relations, said that Apple is the first company to apply the name to a mobile phone, adding that it is already being used by several companies, although she did not mention that one is Cisco's Linksys subsidiary.

'We think Cisco's trademark lawsuit is silly,' Kerris said in a statement.'There are already several companies using the name iPhone for VOIP products, and we believe that Cisco's US trademark registration is tenuous at best.'

Searching for iPhone on Google does indeed turn up several companies that use the name - VocalTec, The Internet Phone Company and Comwave but neither Cisco nor Linkysys appear on the first three result pages - suggesting that Apple may be able to argue that the term is generic, like hoover, aspirin, escalator and jacuzzi.

Cisco filed its lawsuit in a California court on Wednesday, 24 hours after Apple CEO unveiled its iPhone. Initially it suggested that it was prepared to license the name, but its terms proved unacceptable to Apple.

Mark Chandler, Cisco's SVP and general counsel, explained in the Cisco notes blog that the sticking point was not money but Apple's insistence that iPhone would be a closed platform.

'Fundamentally we wanted an open approach,' Chandler wrote. 'We hoped our products could interoperate in the

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future. In our view, the network provides the basis to make this happen - it provides the foundation of innovation that allows converged devices to deliver the services that consumers want. Our goal was to take that to the next level by facilitating collaboration with Apple. And we wanted to make sure to differentiate the brands in a way that could work for both companies and not confuse people, since our products combine both web access and voice telephony. That's it. Openness and clarity.'

He said that he was surprised and disappointed when Apple announced the phone without any agreement over the name.

'We genuinely believed that we were going to be able to reach an agreement and Apple's communications with us suggested they supported that goal,' he wrote. 'We negotiated in good faith with every intention to reach a reasonable agreement with Apple by which we would share the iPhone brand.'

According to Cisco's lawsuit Apple first tried to acquire or license the name as far back as 2001. Cisco refused and as a result, the filing alleges, Apple began a campaign of 'confusion, mistake and deception' in an effort to secure the rights - even setting up a company called Ocean Telecom Services to apply for an iPhone trademark.

Apple declined to discuss Ocean Telecom and emails to the company's Gmail contact address were unanswered.

Legal experts believe Cisco has a strong case. Barry Cohen, a partner in the Philadelphia office of Thorp Reed & Armstrong, told AP that Apple's and Cisco's products clearly overlap and Apple certainly cannot claim that they were unaware of Cisco's trademark. And he thinks it would be risky for Apple to argue that the term is generic.

'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,' he said.

Grace Han Stanton, a trademark expert and partner in the Seattle office of Perkins Coie LLP, believes that Apple may deliberately have sought the further publicity that the lawsuit brings.

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