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VICTORY! ACTA Suffers Final, Humiliating Defeat In European Parliament | 474 comments | Create New Account
Comments belong to whoever posts them. Please notify us of inappropriate comments.
Apple Pays US$60M for IPad Trademark in China
Authored by: Anonymous on Monday, July 02 2012 @ 04:34 PM EDT
Newspick

Apple Inc. took in nearly $8 billion in greater China during the first three months of 2012. The price of continuing to sell its tablet in China under the iPad name: a mere $60 million.
WSJ

More numbers: Proview started out asking for $1.6Bn, eventually dropping to $400M. Apple as usual offers no comment. They don't need to. iPad sales are currently blocked in several large urban markets. To get back that $60M they need to sell only half a million entry level devices. A personal observation: devices claiming to be iPad were widely on sale in western China last month. Whenever I brought out my iPod Touch to show some picture or movie my Chinese audience were all gasps of admiration, mistaking the iPod on the back for iPad.

[ Reply to This | Parent | # ]

Microsoft takes $6.2 billion charge, slows Internet hopes
Authored by: Gringo_ on Monday, July 02 2012 @ 11:18 PM EDT

I found this article astonishing. Microsoft is so desperate to "get in the game" that they are throwing away billions of dollars. It admitted its largest acquisition in the Internet sector was effectively worthless and announced a $6.2 billion charge to write down the value of an online advertising agency it bought five years ago.

Microsoft's online services division (Bing) is currently losing about $500 million a quarter. The unit has lost more than $5 billion in the last three years alone.

Right there in those two paragraphs we are talking over $11 billion. How much is a billion, anyhow? Can you get you get your head around just how much that is? A thousand million dollar bills. What could you do with that much money? Could you manage to spend it all? ...and here we have Microsoft throwing it around like it was pocket change. On top of that there's the 8 billion they spent on Skype, and so many other things.

Microsoft has too much money! I think the share holders might want some of that. How much could Microsoft be paying out in dividends to its shareholders instead of making worthless investments? I suppose they may be more than a tad upset with Microsoft's leadership - or lack thereof.

[ Reply to This | Parent | # ]

ECJ ruling on first sale is interesting. Oracle lost
Authored by: Anonymous on Tuesday, July 03 2012 @ 09:44 AM EDT
See here:-

Court of Justice of the European Union
PRESS RELEASE No 94/12
Luxembourg, 3 July 2012
Judgment in Case C-128/11
UsedSoft GmbH v Oracle International Corp.

An author of software cannot oppose the resale of his ‘used’ licences allowing
the use of his programs downloaded from the internet

The exclusive right of distribution of a copy of a computer program covered by
such a licence is exhausted on its first sale.

[ Reply to This | Parent | # ]

Google's Nexus 7 tablet infringes Nokia patents
Authored by: Anonymous on Tuesday, July 03 2012 @ 12:47 PM EDT

About the Nokia/FRAND/Google commentary. Nokia has already sued Apple and gotten a large payment in a settlement.

Which raises a question: Android does require a license. Could the terms of the license include waiver of any ip claims upon Google and fellow licensees of Android?

The overriding point about Nokia is that its traditional business is collapsing faster than its ability to replace it. Patent claims are an inefficient means to slowing down the competition and generating cash to fund transitions, but it takes less time to send a demand letter and file a suit than it does to build and market polished products. And, yes, that is what I hate about the software patent system.

I grant that the conspiracy is possible, but neither Nokia nor Microsoft can possibly expect that competitors using Android are going to go away. They do both want the time so they can get a profitable position in the mobile markets, but when given a choice of exclusive outcomes, Nokia would rather have the cash than help Redmond with its 1200-step program to mobile dominance.

[ Reply to This | Parent | # ]

  • Doubt it - Authored by: Anonymous on Tuesday, July 03 2012 @ 08:39 PM EDT
Paul Allen saying 'we borrowed' is ho hum ... but the next sentence is fascinating
Authored by: Tolerance on Tuesday, July 03 2012 @ 05:02 PM EDT
I enjoyed the irony when Mr Fontana pointed out (via twitter) the snippet from
Vanity Fair's interview with Paul Allen - "We borrowed ... a long-standing
software tradition". But with context you see it's not that embarrassing:

"In building our homegrown basic, we borrowed bits and pieces of our design
from previous versions, a long-standing software tradition."

Mr Allen doubtless knew that programming languages, even more than APIs, aren't
copyrightable. And at the time (1974) the idea of patents in any software was
dodgy.

That's even true of copyright, though there's an IBM case involving airport
software which goes back to 1961 or so, if I recall correctly. What is more
bracing is the sentence immediately following:

"Languages evolve; ideas blend together; in computer technology, we all
stand on others’ shoulders."


---
Grumpy old man

[ Reply to This | Parent | # ]

Half a million dollars scammed from Boies Schiller account
Authored by: Anonymous on Wednesday, July 04 2012 @ 05:53 AM EDT
Link to News Pick.

Like the rate-fixing scandal, this is just the tip of the iceberg. It is an inadvertent glimpse of something much bigger going on with the banks right now -- something you won't see in the mainstream media until it's no longer possible for the banks to keep up the business-as-usual facade, already crumbling.

This is significant.

No link.

[ Reply to This | Parent | # ]

VICTORY! ACTA Suffers Final, Humiliating Defeat In European Parliament
Authored by: Anonymous on Wednesday, July 04 2012 @ 01:12 PM EDT

My favorite part of the article:

Instead, Parliament made “three strikes” schemes illegal in the entire European Union.
It would be beautiful if that kind of response occurred more often. Imagine an EULA - a non-negotiable license - with a Clause that says "you give up any right to a class action lawsuit examined by the Government and a new Consumer Protection Law comes into being to make such a clause unenforceable.

That's just one example of the many situations which would seriously benefit Society if such a process was followed.

LOL - I'd love to see Microsoft's attempt to get a Law put in place that makes it illegal to sell a computer without Microsoft software turn into a Law that says:

    It is illegal to refuse the sale of a computer without software! Additionally, any computer sold where the consumer does not want the software is due an immediate discount based on the shelf value of said software and the software is to be removed.
:)

RAS

[ Reply to This | Parent | # ]

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