Cisco’s suffered a legal reversal in Australia, where the nation’s Trade Marks Office has ruled the logo of Australia’s Commonwealth Scientific and Industrial Research Organisation (CSIRO) is not an attempt to imitate or cash in on the Borg’s bridge badge.
CSIRO’s logo is supposed to be a stylised map of Australia. Cisco’s reimagining of the Golden Gate bridge and/or an graph is well known.
Cisco objected to the CSIRO’s application to trademark its logo. The Borg’s beef seems to have been that the colours and wave design in both logos are similar and therefore perhaps confusing to punters. That CSIRO’s desire to have its logo classified as pertaining to software and “telecommunications” didn’t help either.
CSIRO has form in the latter field: astronomers there did the basic work that led to the creation of WiFi and the organisation has scooped hundreds of millions in patent royalties from technology companies, including Cisco. The case therefore has an ironic element, as Cisco makes millions from WiFi kit every year — via redwolf.newsvine.com