Taiwan Fines Samsung For Astroturfing

from the why-not-just-compete? dept

At some point companies and organizations are going to have to learn that astroturfing is going to accomplish absolutely nothing positive and almost certainly a whole lot of negative. The practice of faking support through BS internet comments is every bit as petty and stupid as it sounds, resulting in these folks either looking really silly or downright hypocritical. That said, it's one thing to astroturf for what typically amounts to a crappy cause, but it's quite another level of dumb when you do it to try to influence consumer behavior purely as a business practice.

For instance, take Samsung, which has been the king of the mobile phone market for the past few years. It's now been fined by Taiwan's Fair Trade Commission (FTC) for splashing fake comments all over the internet demeaning HTC phones while favoring its own.

In a notice on its website, the consumer protection body said that Samsung had organized an Internet campaign in violation of fair trade rules to praise Samsung smartphones while slamming those of HTC. The FTC set Samsung's fine at New Taiwan dollars 10 million ($340,000). It also leveled smaller fines on two Taiwanese trading companies it said were responsible for mounting the Internet campaign.

It should be noted that this isn't the first time Samsung has been fined for misleading behavior, having faced FTC sanctions mere months ago over the way they mislead consumers about some of the camera functions on their phones. Now, $340k may not seem like that big a deal, and it probably isn't, but you and any potential Samsung partners should be looking at this as a symptom, not the disease.

Even as Samsung has been leading the market lately, this sends a clear message to anyone paying attention that Samsung doesn't think it can actually compete fairly in the marketplace. The company apparently believes they're best bet is to generate positive outlook on their phones by faking grassroot support as opposed to actually earning it. That's a problem in and of itself, but add to it a drop in confidence and favorability now that the astroturfing campaign has been exposed and the corporate-meltdown pump has been primed. Samsung may want to remind itself of the fate of Nokia -- another company that was once at the top of the heap in mobile phones, before it became complacent on innovation and learned how quickly a market can move in a different direction.

Filed Under: astroturfing, taiwan
Companies: htc, samsung

Judge: Apple / HTC Patent Agreement Must Be Revealed (Except For Dollar Amount)

from the so-we-shall-see dept

Last month, we wrote about Apple and HTC settling their ongoing patent dispute, and the subsequent request by Samsung to see the details, which were being kept confidential. It wasn't so much the amount paid that interested Samsung, but which patents were included in the settlement. That's because, in the Apple/Samsung case, Apple has argued that it would never license some of its patents, and thus there should be an injunction banning the sale of certain Samsung devices. However, if those same patents are found in the HTC agreement... then Samsung can point out that, not only is Apple lying to the court, but that an injunction should be off the table. That's because the law suggests injunctions only make sense when there is "irreparable harm." And if you can just pay up the missed license fees, then it's clearly not "irreparable."

The court quickly granted Samsung's request and has now gone a step further, saying that the agreement itself should be made public, except for pricing and royalty terms. Bizarrely, it was actually Samsung who sought to have the information about what patents were included under seal -- such that it could see it, but the public could not. Either way, the judge has made it clear that the patents need to be made public as there's no compelling interest in keeping them secret.

Filed Under: injunctions, patents, settlement
Companies: apple, htc, samsung

Samsung Wants To See The Details Of Apple's HTC Settlement

from the just-curious... dept

So, last week we wrote about Apple settling its patent fight with HTC -- though the terms were secret. It certainly sounded like it wasn't that much money, as HTC seemed to brush off the financial concerns. That appears to have caught the attention of Samsung's lawyers, who have now filed a motion asking the court to make Apple reveal the terms of its HTC settlement. Perhaps more important than the amount, Samsung wants to see if the deal includes all of Apple's patents, since there are some that Apple has been insisting it would never license as part of its argument as to why there needs to be an injunction blocking the sale of Samsung devices, rather than just monetary damages. It would undermine Apple's case if it then turned around and licensed those patents to HTC. As the linked article above notes, it would be surprising if HTC agreed to a deal that didn't include those patents. So the end result of the HTC deal may be that Apple just bargained away some of its ability to get injunctions against Samsung's devices.

Filed Under: licensing, patents
Companies: apple, htc, samsung

SGI Back From The Dead (Again) And Suing Tons Of Companies For Patent Infringement

from the troll-troll-troll-troll dept

Back when I moved to Silicon Valley, Silicon Graphics Inc., (SGI) was still a hot place to work. They were still pumping out cool machines and had a reputation for a fun corporate culture. Of course, that collapsed pretty quickly over the next few years, as SGI totally misjudged the market trends and fell victim to the innovator's dilemma. Basically, SGI never could come to terms with the fact that its premium products were going to be increasingly undercut as cheaper commodity technology improved. Back in 2006, we noted that what remained of SGI had indicated that it planned to resurrect the company by going patent troll. However, we thought we'd avoided that ignoble result when SGI sold most of its assets to Rackable for a mere $25 million three years ago. Silly us for assuming those patents would just go away.

While Rackable changed its name to Silicon Graphics International... the original company actually retained the patents, and renamed itself Graphics Properties Holdings... and over the last few years has been suing lots of companies for patent infringement. In the last year alone it has sued Apple, HTC, LG, RIM, Samsung, Sony, Acer, ASUS, Panasonic, Sharp, Toshiba, Vizio and Motorola Mobility.

As the link above notes, while some of GPH's patents are relatively early, it appears that lots of similar inventions predated key patents. However, the early date may make those patents look stronger, and give GPH much more leverage in getting companies to pay up -- or risk losing the ability to produce devices with nice graphics capabilities.

Filed Under: patent troll, silicon valley
Companies: acer, apple, asus, htc, lg, motorola mobility, panasonic, rim, samsung, sgi, sharp, sony, toshiba, vizio

Apple May Get To Remove Obvious Features From Android

from the how-does-this-promote-the-progress dept

In one prong of the many-pronged attack that Apple has been making on Android, it's scored a victory at the International Trade Commission, where it's been determined that the idea of making a phone number in an email or on a web-page clickable to dial it is so special and wonderful that only Apple could possibly come have up with it. It's rulings like this that make anyone with a modicum of technology smarts shake their heads and wonder why we let clearly non-technical people make decisions like this. Patents are supposed to protect inventions that are non-obvious to those skilled in the space. If you put a 100 groups of five engineers in rooms, asking them to design various smartphone features and interfaces around things like this, I'd bet 99 would come up with a similar feature. It's just natural.

In the meantime, Apple's statements about the ruling are equally ridiculous, given Apple's history of copying others (including Android):

"We think competition is healthy, but competitors should create their own original technology, not steal ours."

Copying an idea and building on it is not "stealing." And if Apple had to build its devices without building on the ideas of others, it wouldn't have very much today. This whole thing is a joke, and it's rulings like this that make engineers have even less respect for the patent system.

Filed Under: android, features, itc, obviousness, patents
Companies: apple, google, htc

Porn Giant Vivid to Take Legal Action Over HTC Vivid Name

from the there's-a-fap-for-that dept

Trademark... *sigh*. Such a decent idea twisted horribly, horribly wrong at times. I'll try to keep this one simple for fear of flying off into some kind of puntastic boondoggle.

Reader sinsi sent in the Tom's Guide story about Vivid, best known for pumping out pornography, sending a cease and desist notice to HTC, best known for pumping out phones. The issue, apparently, is that HTC's latest smart phone is called "The Vivid," a word fairly commonplace in the English language. Now, Vivid Entertainment has crossed paths with the technology sector in the past, when they sued the enigmatically-named PornoTube website (I wonder what they have to offer), or when their executives decided that it was Google and Yahoo's fault that kids were seeing the fine cinematography Vivid produces.

Still, I find myself asking the same questions about many of these Trademark suits lately: doesn't there have to be some kind of industry crossover for this to be valid? And at what point are moron-sturbators in a hurry going to confuse a smart phone for a the latest Superhero porno parody? Seriously...how does this happen? Did someone at Vivid overhear an HTC customer say, "This phone blows," and get confused?

Filed Under: phones, trademark, vivid
Companies: htc, vivid entertainment