An Apple iPhone 5 release could still be several months away but despite this it’s still one of the most hotly talked about smartphones at the moment. One of the big questions regarding the next iPhone surrounds what it will officially be called and today we have some mystery news about Apple pursuing an iPhone 5 domain name.

We have actually been reporting on the iPhone 5 for around two years now. Before the iPhone 4S was released last October its predecessor was the iPhone 4 and so most sections of the media were referring to its successor as the iPhone 5. Of course when it released it was actually titled the iPhone 4S and so straight away the stories started about the next iPhone, again referred to as the iPhone 5.

Of course there’s no guarantee that it will be the iPhone 5 this time either, especially as Apple recently threw a spanner in the works regarding the naming system of the iPad. The successor to the iPad 2 had been widely dubbed the iPad 3 and when the launch finally came it was instead simply called the ‘new iPad.’ There’s no reason then why the iPhone 5 may not be called the ‘new iPhone,’ the ‘next iPhone’ or indeed anything else that takes Apple’s fancy but news today does tell us that Apple is after control of the iPhone5.com domain, which might give us a clue.

A report on MacRumors, sourced from Fusible tells how a claim has been filed by Apple with the World Intellectual Property Organization for control of the iPhone5.com domain. The claim is currently been assessed by the WIPO and it looks as though there will be future proceedings initiated. This domain was established in October 2010 and at present it’s being used as a small discussion forum. MacRumors points out that Apple’s claim is interesting when considering that when other domains have been set up connected to previous Apple products, the company has been slow to take proceedings.

This is likely to be because Apple doesn’t want to give future product names away and in previous years Apple has not pursued control of related domain names until after a product launch. For example it was almost a year after the launch of the iPhone 4 that Apple gained control of the iPhone4.com domain and when the iPhone 4S was released Apple didn’t seek to gain control of the iPhone4S.com domain until some weeks later. Although on that occasion the delay was weeks rather than a year it’s likely that Apple moved to gain control sooner because the domain was pushing pornography sites.

Although we shouldn’t be surprised then that Apple is pursuing control of iPhone5.com, the mystery surrounds the fact that it is doing so now, ahead of a possible product launch and bucking its previous approach. If you’re wondering when that launch might be, then yesterday we wrote about making way for the iPhone 5 and the two release time frames of June or the fall.

Intriguing stuff then. Do you think this news implies that the next iPhone will be called the iPhone 5? If so why do you think Apple has moved to control this domain name so much sooner than usual? We’re interested to hear your ideas about this so let us have your comments.