They most likely sued iFone on the basis of the "i" prefix branding. iMac was released in 1998, iPod and iTunes in 2001.
They sued in 2009, but it was only in 2010 that an Australian tribunal ruled that the "i" prefix could not be an Apple trademark. And that only applies in Australia.
Now, did iFone choose their name based on the positive connotations associated with Apple? I doubt it. And looking at their website, it's about as far removed from Apple as possible.
"Now, did iFone choose their name based on the positive connotations associated with Apple? I doubt it."
I see no reason to doubt it. There are exceptions but "i" prefix anything generally is trying to cash in on the association. Whether Apple deserves to be the only company that can use "i" prefix is another matter (I would say no).
This is simply another case where Apple will end up writing a big check. They did it for iPad in China, iPhone from Cisco, the swiss clock thing a couple months ago, etc. Again the difference is Apple users aren't crying about how broken the world is because they have to write a check for walking all over some other companies IP.
...in the US. Mexico didn't get iPods that year. Mexico didn't even get the first version of the iPhone when it came out. You had to buy it in the US and unlock it. I think the first iPhone legally available in Mexico was the 3G.
The Linksys iPhone came out in 1998 too (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cisco_iphone). I doubt they were copying the iMac naming, which was just released around the same time. Putting 'i' in front of your product names, when the Internet starts to become a commodity and you want to connect your product to it, isn't exactly far-fetched.
Thanks, that is a silver bullet counterexample I was unaware of. I guess there's a decent amount of doubt we can merit whether it was connected.
I guess the "i" branding is a natural extension of "e" branding that followed from email. Anyway like I said I dont think Apple should have exclusive rights to "i" branding for various reasons, the biggest of which is that it doesn't seem like they've attempted to defend it against hundreds of other products using it.
They sued in 2009, but it was only in 2010 that an Australian tribunal ruled that the "i" prefix could not be an Apple trademark. And that only applies in Australia.
Now, did iFone choose their name based on the positive connotations associated with Apple? I doubt it. And looking at their website, it's about as far removed from Apple as possible.