Apple to Announce ‘iWork’ Office Suite?

Monday, 3 January 2005

Ryan Katz, reporting for Think Secret, writes that Apple is set to announce at Macworld Expo a new office suite called iWork, consisting of Keynote 2.0 and a new application called Pages.

Lending significant credence to this rumor is the fact that IGG Software has just renamed their time management/invoicing app, from “iWork” to “iBiz”, offering no explanation other than a small print statement that iBiz is “Formerly IGG Software’s ‘iWork’”.

MacMinute contacted IGG’s Ian Gillespie to ask about the name change:

It is not known whether IGG was forced to change the name of its software by Apple, or whether it simply believes the speculation and wants to differentiate its software in advance. IGG’s Ian Gillespie offered a simple statement on the matter. “We feel that the new name better reflects the direction in which we see our product going, towards business management and not just time-billing,” Gillespie told MacMinute. Gillespie would not comment further.

What seems likely to me is that Apple paid IGG for exclusive rights to the name, and but that Gillespie is under NDA regarding the deal. This is backed up by U.S. Patent and Trademark Office filings uncovered by MacRumors.com, which show that Apple filed a trademark registration for ‘iWork’ in August, but that IGG was the previous holder of this trademark.