Apple came out fighting last night, branding Cisco’s legal challenge "silly" – but the only thing silly about it is that it won’t end up in court.

Initiating - or threatening to initiate - litigation is a tried and tested method of encouraging the other side in a dispute to talk. But nowhere is the tactic employed so often and so effectively as in Silicon Valley, America’s technological Mecca, where barely a day goes by without someone suing – or countersuing - someone else.

An analysis of Cisco’s public comments suggest that this lawsuit is par for the course.

On Tuesday it issued a bullish statement suggesting a deal with Apple over how to share the disputed rights to the iPhone brand was imminent. Then last night, once the lawsuit had been filed, its chief lawyer, Mark Chandler, told The New York Times Cisco would have been willing to let Apple use the name provided it met certain terms.

According to one technology litigator, the situation is clear: "There never was – and never will be – any chance that Apple will drop the iPhone name. It’s simply too important. Cisco knows that and is trying its hardest, in the best traditions of Silicon Valley, to squeeze as much out of Apple as it can."

To the outside world, a lawsuit indicates a breakdown in communication between the two sides but according to the patent litigator, it often has the opposite effect:

"Now the lawsuit has been launched, its been in the papers and the side being sued has dismissed it as being ‘without merit’, Apple and Cisco can get on with the real business of getting back around the table and hammering this out. It might seem like a war in the media, but if anything, they will be talking more now than before."

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