How can Apple use the iPhone name?

If you’ve been following this whole iPhone drama as closely as I have, you’d know that Cisco currently owns the moniker. They even have a whole family of Linksys-branded products using the iPhone name. Then how, pray tell, can Apple use that name for their cell phone?

Apparently, just the night before Steve Jobs took the stage at MacWorld to announce the iPhone, he reached some sort of agreement with Cisco to use the iPhone name. Maybe he flexed some of that glossy white muscle, but whatever the case, it looks like Cisco is going to be rolling in bags and bags of money. And they were pretty smart about it, releasing their version of the iPhone some time back (demonstrating “intent to use” or whatever).

This is according to a Cisco press conference held at CES shortly after the MacWorld keynote.