When Apple formally introduced its touchscreen tablet as the iPad Wednesday, it was not the first tech product to carry that moniker — Fujitsu released its own mobile, touchscreen ‘iPAD’ in 2002.
Speaking with The New York Times, Masahiro Yamane, director of public relations for Fujitsu, said it is the company’s understanding that they still own the name ‘iPad.’ Fujitsu is currently consulting with its lawyers over the next steps it may take.
It could become a similar situation to 2007, when Apple formally introduced the iPhone, only to be sued days later by Cisco, which owned the rights to the name. The Linksys iPhone was released just three weeks before the Apple iPhone was introduced at the Macworld San Francisco keynote in early January 2007. Read more…