The settlement, disclosed in a securities filing, grows out of a 2011 lawsuit that accused the company of violating the Video Privacy Protection Act and California consumer laws. The VPPA forbids video rental agencies from disclosing customer information and also requires them to destroy certain data within one year.
In the lawsuit, former customers said they discovered Netflix still had their personal information when they went to resubscribe to the service later on. This information includes viewing histories or “queues” that Netflix uses to predict what subscribers might want to watch next.
In a related legal filing, Netlix said it is working with plaintiffs’ lawyers to finalize the details of the $9 million settlement before seeking court approval. In these type of deals, lawyers typically take 25 percent of the award.
The VPPA has been an ongoing nuisance for Netflix. Congress passed the 1988 law in the VHS era after a newspaper published the video rental history of Supreme Court nominee Robert Bork; today, the language of the law also applies to newer technologies like streaming. The law, which forbids disclosing rental histories, is blocking Netflix from jumping onto Facebook’s frictionless sharing platform. The company is pushing Congress to amend the law.
UPDATE: Steve Swasey, VP of Corporate Communications for Netflix, provided the following statement:
Netflix has settled a lawsuit related to the company’s compliance with the Video Privacy Protection Act with no admission of wrongdoing. This matter is unrelated to the company’s concerns about the ambiguities contained in the VPPA, which keep Netflix from offering its U.S. members the ability to share their instant watching information with their Facebook friends, an experience Netflix members currently enjoy in 46 other countries.
Last year, streaming radio service Pandora (NYSE: P) tripped over a similar state law in Michigan where it is being sued for disclosing subscribers’ playlists.
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]]>In the latest installment, Apple today sued Motorola (NYSE: MMI) Mobility in an attempt to force the Google subsidiary to stop using its patents against Apple in Germany. Or more simply, Apple filed an American lawsuit to stop a German lawsuit. Got that?
This latest ripple in the smartphone sagas grows out of Motorola/Google’s decision to sue Apple over one of its German FRAND patents.
For the uninitiated, FRAND (Fair Reasonable And Non-Discriminatory) rules are used when a group of companies decide to create an industry-wide standard. To prevent one company in the industry group using a patent to extort the others, all the companies will agree that any patents related to the standard must be shared at a fair price.
In the Apple case, the FRAND patent at issue relates which to a broadband processor made by Qualcomm (NSDQ: QCOM) that Apple uses in the iPhone 4S and other devices.
Motorola claimed the Qualcomm chip infringes one its patents and briefly obtained an order to stop Apple from using the chips. That order was suspended and today it appears to have been overturned.
In the action filed today in San Diego, Apple seeks a declaration forbidding Motorola from suing over the Qualcomm patent in Germany. The company also wants to declare that Qualcomm has a license to the Motorola patent in question and that Motorola breached a contract when it sued Apple.
Here’s the complaint:
Apple Motorola_ San Diego _Germany_
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]]>In recent months, Pinterest’s soaring popularity has led media outlets to dub it the “next Facebook.” The site, which already has millions of users, has also won a 2011 start-up of the year award and significant venture capital. (To see who is using Pinterest, see this excellent account by my colleague Laura Owen).
Unfortunately for Pinterest, all the hype has also brought attention from another quarter: angry copyright owners. On sites like iStock, photographers are complaining that their pretty pictures are being used without permission in users’ collages. And to judge by Pinterest’s voicemail, the photographers are not the only ones upset. When I called the number listed for copyright complaints, a recording said the mailbox was full.
Pinterest said by email that it doesn’t disclose how many copyright complaints it receives. The company added that it actively responds to notices sent by email, and that it’s “building more tools to make it easier for rights holders to file a report.”
In the bigger picture, the copyright questions echo disputes from an earlier era that pit legal rules against new forms of culture. These include a long-running lawsuit over a short flute sample in the Beastie Boys hit ‘Pass the Mic’ (the Beasties won) and a 2005 Supreme Court decision that shut down music-sharing site Grokster.
For Pinterest, the legal issues are not cut and dry. On one hand, its notification scheme should grant it a “safe harbor” under copyright law. It is this law that protects sites like Facebook or YouTube (NSDQ: GOOG) from being sued when a user uploads copyrighted material.
But on the other hand, Pinterest’s business is based almost entirely on using images without permission—something that could lead it to lose its safe harbor protection in the same way that Grokster did.
This does not mean, of course, that someone will sue. A spokesperson for Getty Images, which licenses a wide variety of pictures, informed me that the company is “aware of the issue and [is] discussing it with Pinterest.”
Copyright holders may also fear a public relations fallout that would come with a lawsuit. For content owners, it’s one thing to label hip-hop artists and music fans as “thieves.” But it’s quite another when the content involves food and dress pictures—even the most hardened copyright visigoth would pause at denouncing a 16-year-old who borrows pictures to make a collage of her future wedding.
As for Pinterest, the copyright issues present not just a legal problem but a business one as well. Even if the company can implement a YouTube-like takedown system, users will balk if their pretty image boards become spotted with copyright removal notices. Collages are not much fun with pieces ripped out.
The ultimate solution is likely to be a licensing scheme in which image owners will let Pinterest users post pictures in return for sponsored pics or a royalty payment. The good news is that cash is already rolling in at Pinterest. LL Social reported on Tuesday that the company is quietly collecting commission fees by skimming the affiliate links that give third parties a cut of online sales. Spreading some of that money around will make Pinterest popular with copyright owners in no time.
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]]>Apple (NSDQ: AAPL) is using two new patents for touchscreen technology, obtained in December, as the basis for yet another lawsuit.
]]>Apple (NSDQ: AAPL) is using two new patents for touchscreen technology, obtained in December, as the basis for yet another lawsuit.
In documents filed Tuesday in San Jose federal court, Apple revealed it is using newly-granted US Patents 8,074,172 and 8,086,604 to seek a temporary injunction against Samsung.
The first of the patents appears to cover the spelling and auto-correct feature, used in iPhones and iPads, that results in a proposed word hovering over letters that a user is typing. Here is what the patent says:
One aspect of the invention involves a method that includes: in a first area of the touch screen, displaying a current character string being input by a user with the keyboard; in a second area of the touch screen, displaying the current character string or a portion thereof and a suggested replacement for the current character string [...]
It is harder to discern what exactly the second patent covers as its description is in the form of lawyer-language gobbledygook (perhaps one of our engineer readers can offer a plain-English translation?) :
The present invention provides convenient access to items of information that are related to various descriptors input by a user, by means of a unitary interface which is capable of accessing information in a variety of locations, through a number of different techniques. Using a plurality of heuristic algorithms to operate upon information descriptors input by the user, the present invention locates and displays candidate items of information for selection and/or retrieval. Thus, the advantages of a search engine can be exploited, while listing only relevant object candidate items of information.
The new lawsuit comes after Apple suffered a setback in the same court in December when U.S. District Judge Lucy Koh refused to grant a preliminary injunction that would have barred the sale of Samsung’s Galaxy tablet. Apple is appealing that initial ruling and continuing to seek a permanent injunction to bar the tablet which it says Samsung “slavishly” copied. That lawsuit also concerns three Samsung smartphones.
The new lawsuit differs from the earlier one in that it turns on utility patents not design patents which protect only the ornamental aspects of an invention. Apple has so far been using design patents to protect the iPad but its efforts are unlikely to succeed; Judge Koh appears to have agreed with Samsung that the iPad’s design was preempted by an earlier proto-type from 1994.
The new suit, based on the utility patents, gives Apple a fresh kick at the can.
Apple has been engaged in a worldwide effort to use its intellectual property to keep Samsung out of the market but has so far come up short. Its most recent setback came yesterday in Germany where a court said Samsung can sell a reworked tablet that Apple had briefly banned.
It is not clear whether the new California lawsuit is aimed at Samsung’s tablet, its phones or both. The complaint has been filed under seal so, for now, the only public information available includes references to the new patent numbers in the docket and a filing (embedded below) that says the new case is connected to the prior one. The docket also shows that Apple is once again seeking a preliminary injunction.
The complaint and other documents are likely to be unsealed in coming weeks or months. The news agency Reuters (NYSE: TRI) has recently called attention to federal courts’ questionable practice of reflexively sealing documents, which are normally public, on a corporation’s request. In response to the story, Judge Koh herself issued new guidelines to make the practice less pervasive.
Apple’s feud with Samsung has reportedly cost it more than $100 million in legal fees and may be driven in part by a personal vendetta of its late founder, Steve Jobs.
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]]>Gorelick has been a partner at DC law firm WilmerHale since 2003 but remains plugged into government. She was on the 9/11 Commission and is currently on the Defense Policy Board at the Department of Defense; she also was on the CIA’s National Security Advisory Panel. She may be the most politically polarizing member of Amazon’s board—the mention of her name in some circles raises instant venom with the Clinton-Defense-Justice combo providing plenty of fodder for conspiracy theorists and her presence could be a lightening rod for critics.
At WilmerHale, she heads the groups responsible for defense, government contracts and public policy. She’s also part of the wonderfully titled “litigation/controversy” department. Gorelick’s expertise as a litigator should be of use to Jeff Bezos as the company struggles with its efforts to expand its physical presence while maintaining the competitive tax advantage over bricks-and-mortar stores by keeping sales tax out of the mix. Amazon also has patent issues and other legal areas where someone like Gorelick would come in handy.
Gorelick follows Blake Krikorian as an Amazon advisor. The Sling Media founder joined the board last September.
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]]>The filings come after the Authors Guild decided in December to restart a class action lawsuit that demands Google (NSDQ: GOOG) pay authors for scanning their works without permission. The case was on hold for years as authors and publishers pursued an ambitious three-way deal to split digital book revenue with Google.
After Judge Denny Chin rejected the deal last March, publishers have not gone forward with their original lawsuit and some have instead struck their own deals with Google.
Google is responding to the revived lawsuit by trying to knock the Authors Guild out of the case on the grounds that it doesn’t have legal standing. If a court agrees, this would force the three remaining individual plaintiffs in the case to continue to wage an expensive legal battle on their own. (Three other individual authors dropped out in January).
In its filing this week, the Authors Guild pushed back:
Google turns fairness on its head when it argues that every individual copyright owner must sue here, rather than the Authors Guild on behalf of its 8,500 members.
Meanwhile, Google filed a separate document to oppose “certification”, the legal green light that allows a class action to go forward. Citing a recent Wal-Mart (NYSE: WMT) case in which the Supreme Court tightened the rules for class actions, Google argued that the authors should not be treated as one group:
As became apparent during the settlement approval process, authors differ in their views about Google Books. New survey evidence shows that many authors directly benefit from the program, and affirmatively approve of the way in which Google has made books easier to find.
So what does this all mean? Google, it seems, is hoping the case will shrivel up if it can remove the Authors’ Guild. If that fails, Google will likely dig in for the long haul on the grounds that any settlement could be prohibitive. At the same time, the company has always claimed that it’s legally allowed to scan books under the law of fair use so long as it only shows snippets to the public.
In the bigger picture, it is worth noting that the ground has shifted considerably since the scanning controversy first erupted. Today, ebooks are everywhere and the out-of-print works that Google is holding have little economic value (aside from improving the company’s search algorithm). Compared to Amazon’s mega-footprint or Apple’s new textbook initiative, the once-feared Google book monopoly no longer feels very daunting.
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]]>The Wall Street Journal, citing those all-knowing “people familiar with the matter,” said the DOJ might approve the deal as early as next week. Google (NSDQ: GOOG) has pledged to operate Motorola as a standalone company, and so the government’s main focus on Google has been whether or not it will use the patents acquired from Motorola in an offensive fashion.
Mobile rivals are already complaining that Google plans to uphold Motorola’s patent-licensing strategies on what have been deemed “essential” patents by asking for a royalty rate above what they consider fair as well as its willingness to leave the threat of an injunction on the table, which other companies have pledged not to employ for standards-essential patents. The report said regulators will watch closely to see how Google uses the Motorola patents post-acquisition.
And in related news, the DOJ plans to approve the $4.5 billion purchase of Nortel’s patent portfolio by a group of mobile companies that included Apple (NSDQ: AAPL), Microsoft (NSDQ: MSFT), and Research in Motion (NSDQ: RIMM), denying Google a chance to solidify its patent holdings for far less money than it will pay for Motorola. That event prompted Google to open talks with Motorola and to lash out at its rivals for playing the patent game more effectively than Google.
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]]>On one hand, the company posted impressive growth in its TV, cable and movie businesses. These segments resulted in a $210 million year-over-year quarterly earnings increase and adjusted earnings per share of $0.39 which is better than the $0.34 analysts had predicted.
At the same time, the company announced a 43 percent decline in its publishing business and a quarterly charge of $87 million related to the UK phone hacking settlement.
On an afternoon earnings call, News Corp executives said that about 85 percent of the charge was for lawyers and advisers and the rest for legal settlements. They added that they could not go into details about future settlements but that the “priority is to make this right.” The company says it spent $104 million in 2011 on costs related to the investigation.
The hacking-related charges were not included in the publishing category where the company’s UK and Australia newspapers are experiencing collapsing revenues. The company also said it expected income from its UK newspapers to drop $150 million in the coming year.
Publishing reported second quarter segment operating income of $218 million, a $162 million or 43% decrease compared to the $380 million reported a year ago, reflecting lower advertising revenues at the Australian newspapers and the integrated marketing services business, as well as the absence of contributions from the closure of The News of the World in the U.K.
Analysts, however, appeared less interested in the scandal than in the company’s surging TV and entertainment businesses. The strong performance in these segments was driven in part by the popularity of Fox (NSDQ: NWS) News, FX cable and hit movies like Rio and an Alvin and the Chipmunks.
News Corp also enjoyed strong results from its affiliate BSkyB (NYSE: BSY) which posted improved quarterly income of $174 million compared to $109 million one year ago.
The company also said it expects a reinvigorated performance from Dow Jones as a result of a new CEO, a strong brand and new digital platforms.
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]]>After an explosive 2011, in which seemingly everyone involved in the mobile industry sued their counterparts, 2012 is shaping up as more of a slog. As weary companies start to strongly consider patent licenses instead of patent trials, the notion of FRAND patents—patents essential to tech standards that are required to be licensed on a “fair, reasonable, and non-discriminatory” basis—is becoming more important, and different people have different ideas concerning what it means to be fair.
As a result, Apple has asked the European Telecommunications Standards Institute to clarify exactly what royalty rates its members can seek on so-called FRAND patents, according to The Wall Street Journal. Concern has surfaced regarding a royalty proposal made by Motorola (NYSE: MMI) to Apple that some consider exceedingly high, although the exact details of that proposal were not made public.
Meanwhile, Google is planning to send a letter to standards bodies that makes clear its intention to follow FRAND principles with Motorola’s patents should it be allowed to acquire the handset maker, according to Bloomberg. Google needs Motorola’s patents to help fend off attacks against its Android partners, but its rivals have speculated that Google could be planning offensive moves as well.
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]]>The plants will remain operational now for “smartphone product customization.” The news comes amidst unconfirmed reports that the company is planning to curtail its Symbian lineup after the release of the next model.
Nokia (NYSE: NOK) says that the transfer will result in the loss of 4,000 jobs in total, and the reductions will take place through the end of 2012.
Nokia does not outline how much the move to Asia will mean in terms of money saved, but this is a decision that has been some time in the making: these were plants that were spared in the last round of cuts under CEO Stephen Elop.
Since then, Nokia has reported yet more declines in its smartphone shipments, mainly around its legacy Symbian platform. The company is now gradually moving to making more of its smartphone portfolio based on Microsoft’s Windows Phone platform.
Now, Nokia says that the move is being made to put the manufacturing bases closer to where the different components are being made for those smartphones. That is a move we have seen from many other companies—and was the subject of a series of stories recently concerning Apple (NSDQ: AAPL) in China and the role of Foxconn in that business.
The move to make these plants focused on customization, meanwhile, points to some focus that Nokia does seem to maintain on its software and services for its devices—a crucial part of the company’s differentiation as it moves more and more to a platform being used by its competitors as well. Others that make Windows Phone devices include Samsung and HTC.
The news comes amidst other reports about Nokia that claim the company is planning to curtail its Symbian lineup after the next model comes out.
Symbian is gradually being phased out for Microsoft’s Windows Phone platform, but Nokia had originally said it would support the OS until 2016, and that could still be the case even if it stopped making devices based on it. Nokia transferred the operation of Symbian to Accenture last year.
A spokesperson from Nokia told paidContent that the article was “speculative at best” and would not comment on device rumor or speculation:
“As we have previously said Symbian continues to be an important part of our portfolio and going forward it will play a more focused role as we accelerate our transition to Windows Phone,” he said. “We remain fully committed to the platform through 2016, which means on-going software support as we go forward.”
The company is currently rolling out an update to Symbian, Belle, and the devices remain popular in the Middle East, Russia and India, even as they have lost out to Android-based devices, Apple’s iPhone and even RIM (NSDQ: RIMM) in other markets.
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]]>The suit comes just six months after a jury found Apple (NSDQ: AAPL) violated the playlist patent of another Texas entity, Personal Audio LLC, and ordered the tech giant to pay $8 million. Apple is appealing that decision.
The new case turns on US Patent 6185163 which appears to cover the ‘random’ function common to MP3 players:
A method is provided for altering a play list of a Random Access Player without interrupting the generation of output by the Player.
The patent was issued in 2001 and since obtained by Smart Technologies which, according to Texas state records, was formed last year.
While these type of “patent troll” lawsuits are filed everyday against Apple and other technology companies, this one is notable because Smart Technologies is represented by a new law firm founded by Joseph Farnan Jr., a former federal judge who worked in the same Delaware court where the lawsuit was filed.
Farnan is not the only one to quit the bench to represent patent plaintiffs. Last year, the judge who helped create East Texas’ famous ‘rocket docket’ left to join the patent law firm run by his son.
Patent litigation has become huge business in recent years and has attracted major investments from private equity firms.
A Texas-based attorney for Smart Technologies, Steven Geiszler, declined to comment on which investors are behind Smart Technologies.
Playlist patents are becoming a major nuisance for tech companies. In November, Personal Audio LLC filed a suit claiming Amazon’s Kindle products violated the same patent that it used to obtain the $8 million jury verdict against Apple.
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]]>The controversy began when journal publishers like the Nature Group said that they wanted to be paid whenever a copy of one of their articles is submitted to the patent office.
Articles from Nature and other journals are routinely included in the “prior art” filings that inventors submit to show their invention is indeed new. These filings often include dozens of such articles and are required by law.
The publishers’ demand for a license could increase the cost of obtaining a patent which already runs to tens of thousands of dollars.
In response to an outcry from patent lawyers, the patent office last month issued a memo stating that it is “fair use” for inventors to copy the articles for submission to the patent office.
In the memo, General Counsel Bernard Knight noted that inventors were copying the articles as part of a legal duty and that the practice had no impact on the market for the original articles.
The publishers’ attempts to wring more money out of the journal articles comes at a fateful time for the industry. The university libraries who are their main clients are increasingly upset at having to pay for expensive bundles of journals that contain products they do not want. And in what The Economist has dubbed the “Academic Spring,” many of the professors who produce the content in the journals are promoting a non-profit alternative.
The attempt to charge patent applicants is part of a larger effort by the journals and other copyright owners to obtain new revenues through requiring organizations to pay for internal copies they make.
The issue raises the question of whether such fees are fair or are instead an undeserved second bite of the apple.
The Copyright Clearance Center, an organization that collects royalties on behalf of publishers, says that charging patent applicants is valid because lawyers and inventors do not have a license to reproduce the journals.
Frederic Haber, the general counsel of the CCC, says that law firms’ practice of replicating articles for a patent application is similar to when a big company photocopies a newspaper article for all of its employees. In both cases, he says, someone should pay for the additional reproductions.
In the case of the patent applications, Nature also wants law firms to pay to provide copies of journal articles to clients and other lawyers.
Patent expert Dennis Crouch, who first reported on the story at Patently0, estimates that the scheme could be worth $50 million if lawyers agree to the license.
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]]>The staff attorney for the International Trade Commission plans to recommend to the judge overseeing the case that Barnes & Noble did not infringe Microsoft’s mobile patents with the Nook, according to a report by Bloomberg. This is an extremely preliminary development: the judge overseeing the case can decide whatever he likes when he issues his ruling in April, and that decision can be further appealed to a panel of ITC judges.
But the ITC, while a speedier venue for patent rulings than the court system, has not really rewarded patent holders seeking infringement rulings. Apple (NSDQ: AAPL) was able to get a final ruling against HTC, but for a minor piece of its smartphones that HTC has already said it can work around. Microsoft was able to get a preliminary ruling against Motorola (NYSE: MMI), but on only one of the seven patents it wanted to assert against Motorola.
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]]>The company is gearing up to start inserting “featured stories” into people’s mobile feeds—effectively, marketing-led posts—which could start appearing as soon as early March. The date and news of the launch comes from the FT, which cites several people familiar with Facebook’s planning as its source.
Since filing its S-1 for an initial public offering last week, there has been a lot of speculation on how, exactly, mobile will fit into Facebook’s money-making picture longer term. The company was very sober in its description of its mobile business—usage is growing faster than even desktop engagement, but there’s no money in that growth yet, it admitted.
That was something of a bum note in a document that otherwise dazzles with its growth story to date.
If the FT report is true, it could mark the first step in Facebook’s strategy to change that and start to make marketing dollars out of its 425-million active mobile users, and take a portion of a mobile ad market that is going to top $2 billion in the U.S. alone this year.
Facebook still has a long way to go before its mobile presence—via the mobile web and apps—is a mirror, or even enhanced, version of what it offers on the desktop. However, it does look like there may be also some developments underfoot there as well, in the form of app buttons appearing on Facebook’s mobile web site.
Meanwhile, the news of “featured stories” appears to be a development on a story from last week, which quoted Paul Gelb, head of mobile for agency Razorfish, saying that his company was trialling rich-media mobile advertising with Facebook.
Facebook may well be looking into more classic display ads for its mobile interfaces, but in any event Gelb later clarified that he was referring to “rich media featured stories”, not ads.
But if featured stories are what are in play here, Facebook gave nothing away in its own statement to paidContent: “We want to clarify that we are not working with any agency to create paid ads on our mobile platform,” a spokesperson said in an email.
Even so, the past few days are not the first time that the subject of Facebook mobile sponsored stories have come up: in December, Bloomberg also noted that Facebook would launch such a service in March 2012.
Facebook has already taken over in markets like the U.S. and UK in terms of having the biggest share of revenues in online display ads, so it seems like a no-brainer that it would take that pole position into the mobile sphere. However, issues over privacy, and the basic lack of real estate on a mobile screen have been some of the gating factors in Facebook taking up the mobile marketing opportunity more aggressively.
When Carolyn Everson, Facebook’s global VP of marketing solutions, spoke at paidContent’s Advertising conference in September 2011, she highlighted Facebook’s caution in this mobile:
“We are holding ourselves to as high a standard as possible on mobile,” she said. “I don’t rule mobile out, but we are working hard to figure out what the right model is. We haven’t figured that out yet.”
As we noted at the time, check-in deals have been the one exception to that so far: when a user is in a location where Facebook can deliver a relevant offer, those deals are pushed to users. But if that has driven revenues to Facebook, it was not enough to merit a mention in the S-1 form.
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]]>To be sure, the former CEOs of Research in Motion (NSDQ: RIMM) would gladly trade places with Page, who last year regained control of the company he founded and brought new focus, and Brin, who is probably living out an alpha geek’s dream by working on Google’s most secret and far-out projects. But even since Michigan—Page’s alma mater—beat Virginia Tech in the January 3rd Sugar Bowl, not much has gone right for Google.
A quick recap:
Tarnished Chrome: Google was caught participating in a “sponsored post” scheme involving advertising for its Chrome browser, in which bloggers were paid to write favorable reviews of the browser that in some cases included the Web page for Chrome. It blamed outside agencies and reduced the rank value for the Chrome Web page, as buying links through ad campaigns is a no-no for everyone else.
When Google+ Is A Minus: Google managed to out-CES CES with its breathtaking decision to incorporate Google+ pages directly and prominently into its crown jewel: search results. The Search Plus Your World rollout generated a huge controversy that overshadowed any one single event that happened that week in Las Vegas, troubling both internal employees and former Googlers unable to recognize a company that would alter its search results to favor links to a half-baked social network.
Caught Red-Handed: After a local-business directory in Kenya noticed that some of its customers were calling it for support on building Web sites—a product the company didn’t offer—Mocality set a trap for Google employees who were systematically accessing its database and attempting to poach its customers. A “mortified” Google fired its country manager for Kenya and apologized.
A Short Quarter: Google missed financial analysts’ expectations for its fourth quarter, and observers began to wonder if the cash machine that is Google’s AdWords and AdSense had started to wane. Google’s stock has fallen nearly 7 percent since those earnings were released amid a rise in the Nasdaq over the same period.
Dealing Drugs: Google had already admitted to improper behavior involving ads for drugs sold by rogue pharmacies, but details emerged from a Wall Street Journal (NSDQ: NWS) report in January that showed Page was aware of the fact that Google ad executives helped those operating such pharmacies circumvent review policies designed to exclude such ads.
Transparently Murky: In a public-relations decision borrowed from a desperate company’s playbook, Google chose to reveal sweeping changes to its privacy policy at almost the exact same time that Apple (NSDQ: AAPL) released its fourth-quarter financial results on schedule. While the tech press was pretty busy dealing with the impact of Apple’s surreal quarter, Congress was not, and Google was forced to explain its conduct. The company said the changes were designed to simplify policies across multiple products, but they also had the effect of letting Google see your online activity across a host of its products—from Gmail to YouTube, Google+ to search—and form an aggregated picture of your potential buying habits.
When It Rains: In a sign of just how far Google has fallen in many people’s estimation, an obscure change to a technical policy involving the Galaxy Nexus phone—the best Android device yet released—briefly convinced many that Google was removing that device from the special Nexus category, which allows people owning those phones to receive software updates unencumbered by their wireless carrier. Google exacerbated the problem by botching its initial public-relations response, and outrage flew at the speed of Twitter before it was able to clarify that nothing had changed from a consumer’s perspective.
Meanwhile, Google’s biggest rivals are living it up.
Facebook is the new darling of the tech and investment communities following its plans to file for what will probably be the biggest initial public offering ever raised by a tech company. Tim Cook is attempting to prove he can run Apple without Steve Jobs, and has taken a big step with a huge quarter and a new interest in charitable giving. Microsoft’s collaboration with Nokia (NYSE: NOK) probably won the week at CES, it is preparing to launch a new operating system that will help bridge the chasm between the company’s PC era and what it hopes is its mobile era and it gleefully jumped all over Google’s missteps.
Google’s unlikely to have a month like that again, this year anyway. But it’s kind of shocking to contemplate just how uneasy the company has made a lot of people by its decisions around social search and privacy. Perhaps more troubling, its responses to those big questions have been tone-deaf and almost defiant, traits one did not associate with Google until recently.
January could easily be a blip in the long run for Google. The economy seems to be improving, which could boost search advertising spending. Android remains a vital part of the mobile story, and Apple could have a hard time sustaining the pent-up demand for the iPhone 4S (it would be unfair to expect gains like that every quarter). And if Google+ really does turn into a service on par with Facebook or Twitter, Google could have both pieces of the modern online data puzzle—search and social—at its disposal.
So why then do many people I talk to about Google—both tech insiders and regular Joes at the bar—feel uneasy? Maybe it’s because a lot of those people finally realized in January that Google has turned into a conventional company—one that pushes the line wherever possible to maximize revenue and profit even at the expense of users and customers—something it swore it would never become.
Once you’ve gone down that road, it’s pretty hard to go back, and all the driverless cars and mysterious entertainment devices in the world won’t necessarily help.
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]]>The case was brought by French online mapping firm Bottin Cartographes, which charges for its maps.
Google is ordered to pay €500,000 ($658,000/£416,100) in damages and interest plus a €15,000 ($19,740/£12,483) fine, AFP reports.
It’s enough to make an American entrepreneur scratch his head in frustration. Google, like many companies, supplies its products to consumers for free. This case concerned syndication of those maps to other businesses.
So dominant is Google now that it seemingly can’t help but get tripped up by anti-trust legislation, which naturally exists to prevent companies abusing dominant positions.
“We will appeal this decision,” Google France tells AFP. “We remain convinced that a free high-quality mapping tool is beneficial for both Internet users and websites. There remains competition in this sector for us, both in France and internationally.”
Google is currently being investigated by the European Commission’s anti-trust department for allegedly abusing its dominant search position by promoting demoting rivals’ web services and by imposing obligations on ad sales.
A group of data protection officers has also this week asked France’s data privacy authority to probe Google’s newly harmonised privacy policy, due to take effect in March.
]]>The company behind the service had big plans to take it to the mass market, but then the studios set out to block the move, touching off an eight-year legal battle.
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The company behind the service had big plans to take it to the mass market, but then the studios set out to block the move, touching off an eight-year legal battle.
The latest ruling may have put a nail in the coffin of the once-trendy service. Last month, a Santa Clara Superior Court judge quietly issued a tentative ruling, which was obtained by paidContent, that sides with the studio-backed DVD Copyright Control Association. The group claims that the servers used by Kaleidescape illegally override the copy protection found on DVDs.
With DVD sales dropping every year, and streaming services like Netflix (NSDQ: NFLX) taking over as dominant forces in the living room, why would the studios continue to fight to stop Kaleidescape from selling a pricy home media server system that has never caught on with mainstream consumers?
The answer likely lies in the studios’ UltraViolet movie cloud initiative, which encourages movie lovers to upload their disc collections to a studio-authenticated cloud-based digital locker rather than personal home storage devices. The studios and their UltraViolet partners are embarking on a big promotional push for the cloud-based system, and clearing out any competing technology that distracts consumers might suit that objective.
If Judge William J. Monahan’s ruling is confirmed, it could spell an inglorious end for Kaleidescape. Available only through dealers, Kaleidescape had Bush-era business plans of lower-costs versions of its servers catching on with mainstream shoppers prowling the lanes of Best Buy, looking for ways to better manage and enjoy their burgeoning DVD collections.
The court battle with the studios stymied those plans. The studios took legal issue with the way Kaleidescape’s servers copy DVDs – the systems override the Copy Control System (CCS) encryption found on every studio-sold disc, and the DVD CCA has argued that it is illegal unless the DVDs remain loaded into the device. (For early adopters, getting rid of thousands of DVD discs and boxes was kind of the point all along.)
Kaleidescape, which argued that it was fair use for individual consumers to upload their DVDs onto a device that allowed them to better enjoy their personal use, actually won the first round of the battle, in a California Superior Court in 2007. But the case was sent back to the court on appeal in 2009, and it now appears as though Kaleidescape could lose.
Kaleidescape CEO Michael Malcom, in a letter sent to the company’s dealers shortly after last month’s ruling, pledged to fight on. He said the company has already filed its objections to the tentative ruling and will appeal if its not successful.
Of course, this is not the first time the studios—or more specifically, DVD CCA—have offed a technology. as CNet’s Greg Sandoval noted Thursday, Real Networks was stopped in court by the group when it tried to bring a similar media server system to market in 2010. And last year, the studios won a court ruling that effectively shut down virtual DVD service Zediva.
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]]>“Given the wide range of services you offer, and popularity of these services, changes in your privacy policy may affect many citizens in most or all of the EU member states.
“We wish to check the possible consequences for the protection of the personal data of these citizens in a coordinated procedure. We have therefore asked the French data protection authority, the CNIL, to take the lead. The CNIL has kindly accepted this task and will be your point of contact for the data protection authorities in the EU.
“In light of the above, we call for a pause in the interests of ensuring that there can be no misunderstanding about Google’s commitments to information rights of their users and EU citizens, until we have completed our analysis.”
Good that Europe’s data protection authorities are ensuring @Google ‘s new privacy policy complies with EU law bit.ly/xiz8U6 #EUDataP
— Viviane Reding (@VivianeRedingEU) February 3, 2012
The Article 29 group advises the executive European Commission on data protection and privacy matters and comprises representatives of member states’ national data protection bodies.
In January, Google said it would unify privacy policies from over 70 of its products, a move which mirrors its unification of user services with Google+ and its personalised search launch. It explained: “Regulators globally have been calling for shorter, simpler privacy policies.”
The Article 29 group has previously forced Google to reduce its data retention time, unsuccessfully asked Google to warn the public before it starts photographing for Street View, issued tough new location sharing guidelines and adjudged a Facebook privacy policy revision “unacceptable”
The European Commision’s justice department sought to raise public awareness of use of their data by designating January 28 European Data Protection Day.
Separately, the EC’s antitrust department is currently assessing competition complaints against Google.
]]>Today’s ruling in a Mannheim court granted Motorola a permanent injunction on Apple products that use its iCloud technology, specifically around push email services, and, like many patent cases, is not based on a recent patent but an older one—in this case, one that Motorola holds around paging devices (one of the company’s earliest wireless products).
Update: Motorola has issued a formal response to the decision:
“We are pleased that the Mannheim court has recognized the importance of our intellectual property and granted an enforceable injunction in Germany against Apple Sales International,” it said in an emailed statement.
[original article continues below]
Apple, meanwhile, said that it is already appealing in this case:
“Apple believes this old pager patent is invalid and we’re appealing the court’s decision,” Apple told paidContent in an emailed statement.
But before you start thinking that this might mean that various new, iCloud-enabled Apple products will be disappearing from German retailers, think again. PaidContent understands that the injunction applies only to a specific function: the instant, push email service that Apple offers via MobileMe/iCloud, and there are only a limited number of users in Germany actually taking that service. Plus, there are already at least two workarounds available: for customers to either download the email manually; or to set up a script to check email regularly anyway.
The case is still developing so it remains to be seen how the injunction will play out.
More pressing, it seems, is the outcome of another Motorola court case that dates back from December, and which has been in the works for even longer, which has resulted in Apple pulling some older models of the iPad and iPhone from its online store in Germany.
These products were pulled overnight and are indeed absent when paidContent visited the online store this morning. They are, however, still being sold offline through Apple stores and other retailers.
Update: The temporary injunction has now been lifted, but Motorola says the case continues:
“We are pleased that the Mannheim court has recognized the importance of our intellectual property and granted an enforceable injunction in Germany against Apple Sales International. Although the enforcement of the injunction has been temporarily suspended, Motorola Mobility will continue to pursue its claims against Apple.”
Earlier, Apple said it would appeal the decision:
“While some iPad and iPhone models are not available through Apple’s online store in Germany right now, customers should have no problem finding them at one of our retail stores or an authorised reseller. Apple is appealing this ruling because Motorola repeatedly refuses to license this patent to Apple on reasonable terms, despite having declared it an industry standard patent seven years ago.”
This case, essentially, is another chapter in Apple’s European battle over FRAND patents, which fall under rules that require equipment makers to license IP on “Fair, Reasonable and Non-Discriminatory” terms, in order to make sure that IP that has been declared industry standard is not intentionally made more expensive for competitors than non-competitors in a field like smartphones.
Apple has been facing other issues over FRAND terms in Europe, specifically with Samsung. That case looks like it may have taken a turn in Apple’s favor: this week the European Commission said that it would start an antitrust investigation into Samsung and whether it has violated FRAND rules in its dealings with Apple. The EC cautions that it has not yet declared a judgement in this investigation so it could still go either way.
In this Motorola FRAND case, Motorola Mobility says that it approached Apple in 2007 with its FRAND licensing terms and attempted to negotiate a license with Apple for over three years.
“Apple’s refusal to negotiate in good faith, as well as their aggressive litigation campaign against Android, left Motorola Mobility with no option other than to seek to enforce the Company’s rights and patent portfolio. Motorola Mobility remains committed to licensing rather than litigation as the proper vehicle for resolving intellectual property disputes,” Motorola told paidContent in an emailed statement.
You might recall that disputes over FRAND licensing was the issue in the FRAND dispute with Samsung—the case that spurred the EC investigation
Whether this will result in a FRAND investigation of Motorola by the EC remains to be seen, but if it does that could have wider implications since the Commission is already investigating antitrust issues regarding the proposed merger between Motorola and Google.
Given that this is all really about stabbing at your competition on a legal level, one possible outcome might be particularly ironic: if what people want are Apple products, by not being able to buy the less expensive, older models, they may end up opting for the 4S in the end and boost sales of the company’s highest margin, priciest device. A Win-Win in that case?
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]]>Prosecutors timed the seizures to coincide with a major marketing event, Superbowl XLVI. Similar enforcement actions occurred before last year’s Superbowl and before cyber-Monday last November when the feds bagged 150 illicit sites.
Today’s haul included streaming sites with names like sports95.com and firstrowtv.com. Prosecutors are also charging 28-year-old Michigan man Yonjo Quiroa with criminal copyright for operating the sites from his house.
Meanwhile, Reuters (NYSE: TRI) reports that New England quarterback Tom Brady admitted he used an unauthorized stream to watch last year’s Super Bowl while he was in Costa Rica nursing a sore foot.
The theatrics of the enforcement action resembled previous ones. As on other occasions, today’s news featured a swarm of federal agencies, led by Homeland Security, who displayed fake merchandise and gave triumphant statements.
The website seizures are based on a legal process created in the 1970’s to let federal agents confiscate the property of drug dealers. Once seized, the sites display federal law enforcement badges.
After a number of months, the names are forfeited and become the property of the federal government. The government, in a tactic of dubious legality, has also been using some of the forfeited sites to display anti-piracy messages from Hollywood.
Las Vegas odds makers are favoring the New England Patriots to win the big game by three points over the New York Giants.
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