The titans of both media and technology will convene in Sun Valley, Idaho, for an exclusive annual conference sponsored by the boutique investment firm Allen & Company. It will be the first time since the piracy debate went viral that top technology and entertainment executives will assemble en masse on neutral ground to discuss major issues affecting both industries.
A House panel launched an investigation into whether a U.N. agency sent computers and other technology to Iran and North Korea in possible violation of U.N. Security Council sanctions. The Foreign Affairs Committee probe comes on the heels of a State Department review of the U.N. World Intellectual Property Organization, which insisted last week that it did nothing wrong in providing "standard IT equipment" to the patent and trademark offices in the two countries.
Samsung Electronics defeated Apple in the latest spat in the rivals' patent wars when a British judge ruled Samsung's Galaxy tablets did not infringe the U.S. company's designs for the iPad because they were "not as cool." In the High Court judgment Judge Colin Birss said that Samsung's Galaxy tablets belonged to the same family as the Apple design when viewed from the front, but the Samsung products were "very thin, almost insubstantial members of that family with unusual details on the back".
Some advertising networks have been secretly collecting app users personal details over the past year and now have access to millions of smartphones globally, U.S.-based mobile security firm Lookout said. These unregulated practices are on the rise, Lookout said as it unveiled the first industry guidelines on how application developers and advertisers could avoid raising consumer angst.
A rash of patent lawsuits has prompted the UN to call smartphone makers and others mobile industry bodies together. It said the parties needed to address the "innovation-stifling use of intellectual property" which had led to several devices being banned from sale.
Samsung Electronics scored a partial victory against arch-foe Apple Inc after a U.S. appeals court lifted a freeze on sales of its Galaxy Nexus smartphones but upheld a lower court's decision to temporarily halt sales of its Galaxy 10.1 tablet computer. Apple accused its Asian rival, the leader in global mobile device sales, in lawsuits of blatantly copying its hot-selling iPhones and iPads.
Facebook Inc. is launching a new type of mobile advertising that targets consumers based on the apps they use, pushing the limits of how companies track what people do on their phones. The new ads could stoke privacy concerns because they let Facebook go a step further than mobile-ad networks, which track what ads people have clicked on through a phone's Web browser.
Executives at Yahoo and Facebook have completed an extensive strategic deal, as part of a final settlement of their contentious patent infringement lawsuit and countersuit. According to sources close to the situation, the agreement will include a major expansion of their ongoing partnership, including a joint advertising sales effort, as well as cross-licensing of some key patents between the pair.
In a ground-breaking vote on an issue that affects all of us, the United Nations Human Rights Council endorsed a resolution upholding the principle of freedom of expression and information on the Internet. The broad support for the resolution demonstrated that maintaining the free flow of information on the Internet is a global call and not something pushed only by a few Western states.
A Shanghai-based voice application developer, Zhizhen Network Technology, has reportedly sued Apple for allegedly infringing a patent it holds related to "a type of instant messaging chat bot system" it calls Xiaoi Bot. The company argues that the patent, which it filed for in August 2004 and was awarded in February 2006, is being violated by Apple's Siri.
Despite repeated alerts, tens of thousands of Americans may still lose their Internet service on July 9 unless they do a quick check of their computers for malware that could have taken over their machines more than a year ago. According to the FBI, the number of computers that probably are infected is more than 277,000 worldwide, down from about 360,000 in April.
With cybercriminals a greater threat to small businesses than ever before, more entrepreneurs are left asking themselves who is to blame for hacking attacks that drain their business accounts. Many smaller businesses find themselves vulnerable to cyberthieves, mainly because they have limited budgets for Web security and few or no technology experts on staff.
The U.S. judge who tossed out one of the biggest court cases in Apple Inc's smartphone technology battle is questioning whether patents should cover software or most other industries at all. Richard Posner, a prolific jurist who sits on the 7th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals in Chicago, told Reuters that the technology industry's high profits and volatility made patent litigation attractive for companies looking to wound competitors.
HTC Corp., Asia’s second-largest smartphone maker, won a London court ruling against Apple Inc. over patents for touchscreen technology used for its mobile devices, including Apple’s slide-to-unlock feature. HTC’s devices don’t infringe four Apple patents for the technology and three of those patents are invalid, Judge Christopher Floyd said.
The European Parliament rejected a global agreement against copyright theft, handing a victory to protesters who say the legislation would punish people for sharing films and music online. The vote marked the culmination of a two-year battle between legislators who supported the Anti-Counterfeiting Trade Agreement (ACTA) and it's largely young, digitally savvy opponents.
The companies that control critical infrastructure in the United States are reporting higher numbers of attacks on their systems over the past three years, according to a report issued by the Department of Homeland Security. The Industrial Control Systems Cyber Emergency Response Team (ICS-CERT) says the number of reported attacks is up and attackers have been targeting companies with access to the country's power grid, water filtration facilities and a nuclear facility.
A European Union court dealt a blow to Oracle Corp. by allowing software licenses to be resold, even if the package has been downloaded directly from the Internet. Oracle had launched proceedings against UsedSoft, a German company that markets used software licenses acquired from customers of the U.S. software company.
Verizon reiterated its opposition to the Federal Communications Commission's net neutrality rules, arguing that they violate the First Amendment and are completely unnecessary, among other things. The rules "impose dramatic new restrictions on broadband Internet access services providers," Verizon wrote in a filing , and seek to "control all aspects of broadband Internet access service."
Twitter released its first Transparency Report that disclosed how many demands for user information it received from governments around the world. As expected, U.S. government agencies filed the most requests.
A U.S. judge on rejected a request by South Korea's Samsung Electronics Co. to lift a ban on U.S. sales of its Galaxy Tab 10.1, a tablet computer that competes with Apple Inc.'s iPad. Last week, U.S. District Judge Lucy Koh in San Jose, California, granted Apple's request to halt sales of the tablet, which runs on Google Inc's Android, giving the iPhone maker a significant win in the tablet patent wars.
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The GigaLaw Firm helps companies of all sizes protect their brands online, using domain name dispute policies – such as the Uniform Domain Name Dispute Resolution Policy (UDRP) – and other legal tools available to copyright and trademark owners on the Internet.