Cisco went to court... and lost. Here's an article where I 've learned that there's a stylized version of the Golden Gate in Cisco's logo and that CSIRO's logo is the shape of Australia.
I'm embarrassed to admit that I never realized that "Cisco" was, in addition to the company's name, short/slang for San Francisco, nor that their logo was meant to evoke the Golden Gate Bridge.
Seconded. Never really thought about the word "Cisco", and assumed the logo was intended to evoke RF on an oscilloscope or some other visualization of electronic signaling.
Honestly, i never linked the cisco logo to the goldengate. It looked like meters of an audio output or something else electronic, an o-scope. The proportions seem off, probably because i never see the bridge from the side.
Im betting they want to play down the link to the city name. "Frisco" is a week trademark because of its common use. Cisco is akin to the "Syfy" channel. You might win on the letters, but not the spoken sounds ... As oppossed to the famous canadian case of "MikeRoeSoft.com" where sound trumped letters.
You win on letters, you lose on i18n. "Syfy" in Polish is plural of "syf", which means disorder, dirt, something ugly, or (probably also the origin of the word) syphilis.
Obviously, this made telling some friends about some shows I watched rather awkward. ;).