You know, there are times when I think that companies spend more on lawyers than they do on developing better products. A case in point is the way that companies will file for patents based on concepts over real technology or buy up others to “strengthen” their position in the market. As an example let’s take a look at the legal battle between HTC and Apple.
According to the story, Apple filed a patent suit against HTC because HTC was in violation of ten core patents that Apple holds. Why did Apple file this? Their premise is that HTC is using their intellectual property and by doing that they are taking revenue away from them. However, when you see this type of suit pop up it is usually more about finding a way to stifle the competition. After all that is exactly that Apple is saying about the Lodsys suit. So Apple files a suit claiming that HTC has violated 10 Patents.
The US International Trade Commission (How can it be international if it is a US Government body) decided that HTC was guilty of violating 2 of those 10 (which HTC is trying to appeal). HTC, for their part are working to fight back by the attempted purchase of S3 Graphics. You see HTC wants this very badly because Apple is rumored to be using several S3 patents without paying. If HTC can get this portfolio then they would have a bargaining chip to work with.
But the purchase of S3 is not yet final so HTC is in a bit of trouble and could be forced to halt sales of certain handsets (the ones that have technology that is in violation of Apple’s Patents). To combat this HTC has now taken to the UK courts. Our guess is that they feel that Apple will not have the upper hand off of their home turf. So now we start another round of legal battles that are intended to delay the halt of HTC sales in the US while HTC pushes forward their attempt to buy S3 and have something they can hold over Apple.
Meanwhile Apple is growing more concerned about the Android movement and is surely dumping more and more money into their legal budget just like HTC. In a normal business the first budget to get cut is the IT budget (I should know having been there). In a technology company the first thing to get slashed is the R&D budget. This means that while HTC and Apple are sending money hand over fist in court their products will suffer. With Apple they will spin these until the masses feel they really wanted this in the first place, while HTC will more than likely just push out refreshed products. In the long run the only ones that suffer are the consumers.
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While cruising around the web looking for something interesting to write about I stumbled upon a hastily written article about a new mobile OS from Mozilla. Thinking this was something interesting I headed over to Mozilla’s Wiki website to read more, what I found was as concerning as it was interesting. For those that do not know, Mozilla is the creative force behind such open source applications as FireFox and Thunderbird. These two have been in competition with Microsoft’s Internet Explorer and to a lesser degree Outlook. The question is can they compete with companies like Google and Apple in addition to Microsoft. Now all of this is the interesting part, what is concerning is the fact that they want your mobile OS to be all cloud based. They do not come out and say this directly but they say “Mozilla believes that the web can displace proprietary, single-vendor stacks for application development. To make open web technologies a better basis for future applications on mobile and desktop alike”
Read more: Does the SmartPhone Industry need another player?
Anon has something of a reputation (like you did not know that). Its reputation is often enough to put fear into people or corporations. So when Anonymous put out a call on their IRC channel targeting PayPal and asking for a mass walkout. Many people left, we would be willing to wager that many of these left because they were scared of Anon hacking the internet bank (yes PayPal is a bank). Of course you have to wonder about why Anon would target PayPal in the first place… Well that is a pretty long story.
Read more: There is nothing to fear, but fear itself... and...
We have heard that Netflix is changing their pricing in September. We suspected as much after they screwed up their authorization algorithm a few weeks before and kicked all of the Media Center PCs and a few Boxiees out for a few days. The new setup allows them better control and monitoring over their clients who chose to stream content and also provides for better protection against copying the video stream when using a Windows Media Center PC. Of course our initial belief that Netflix was going to begin charging more for people with extended capabilities (like Media Center) did not emerge we still think that Netflix may have had this in mind.
Yesterday we were sent a link to some interesting news about a nation-wide crackdown on suspected Anon members. This even included a “hacker” that is fairly close to where I live. The total number of people that were collared was around 15. The FBI and other agencies were very pleased with the day’s activities and went on to say that this was a “major arrest”. However was it really? Do the news or Law Enforcement agencies involved have any clue as to what is really going on? One little indicator that they do not comes up with their timeline; according to most media sources Anon starts as a result of the WikiLeaks incident. However most of the groups involved with Anon pre-date that by many years (in fact Anon does as well).
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