The deal ends a six-week legal trademark that began Jan. 10, a day after Apple CEO Steve Jobs his company's iPhone, when Cisco filed suit in a northern California federal court, claiming the name as its own via a 2000 acquisition. Cisco currently sells a line of Linksys VoIP devices under the .

In a terse joint statement, Apple and Cisco said that they are both "free to use the 'iPhone' trademark on their products throughout the world." All pending legal action will be dismissed.

The two companies will also "explore opportunities for interoperability in the areas of security and consumer and enterprise communications." Earlier, Cisco had been pushing for an interoperability commitment.

With the agreement, Apple is free to use the iPhone label that Jobs unveiled at MacWorld Expo to fanfare and an instant 5 percent boost in the company's share price. If the feud had gone on, Apple might have been barred from using the name or launching the phone on time.

According to statements made by Cisco in January, it and Apple had been negotiating over the iPhone trademark for about two years, with talks dragging on even as Jobs stood on stage and demonstrated the new device in San Francisco. When Jobs used the iPhone moniker at MacWorld, Cisco brought out the lawyers. In return, Apple dismissed the Cisco lawsuit as "silly."