The dispute over Apple's alleged infringement of Cisco's iPhone trademark is very interesting when viewed from an Enterprise 2.0 perspective:

1. Cisco's SVP and General Counsel, Mark Chandler, is blogging it. This is highly significant as it may be the first instance of a prominent corporate lawyer blogging about a live, ongoing IP infringement dispute. As Kevin O'Keefe says over at LexBlog:

Robert Scoble says he's never seen blogging like this. Neither have I. What takes me back is Scoble picking up on this unique use of a lawyer's blog while the legal blogosphere has been silent on Chandler's use of a blog. Are lawyers too busy blogging back and forth between themselves to appreciate the impact blogs can have when used to comment on pending litigation?

2. In his post, Mark Chandler states:

What were the issues at the table that kept us from an agreement? Was it money? No. Was it a royalty on every Apple phone? No. Was it an exchange for Cisco products or services? No. Fundamentally we wanted an open approach. We hoped our products could interoperate in the 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 [my emphasis].

Cisco may well have an interest in seeing the Web 2.0 vision of the internet as an application development environment realised - but this constitutes the latest of several consecutive statements by huge, established, A-list tech brands (previously lumbering dinosaurs) confirming that open source, SAAS, and Web 2.0 are definitely going mainstream.