New Study Questions The Link Between Driving While Yakking And Car Crashes

from the no-link? dept

Well, this ought to be a bit on the controversial side. Despite previous studies that have claimed that driving while talking on the phone increases the likelihood of an accident a new study has come out saying that there's no evidence of a link between driving while on the phone and accidents. Of course, there's a lot that can be questioned in the study. First of all, it focuses on aggregate data about the increase in mobile phone usage compared to aggregate crash data. You can hide an awful lot of significant information when you only look at the aggregate data. Furthermore, part of the study only looks at fatality crashes, where there could be plenty of other explanations for a decrease in crashes causing fatalities (safer cars, anyone?). The study does also look at overall crash data in seven states, as well as data for accidents at times when people are most likely to be on the phone -- and still couldn't find a link. However, as the authors of the report note, at the very least, it should lead to further study to see whether or not driving-while-yakking is really as big a threat as we've been told over the past few years.

Filed Under: driving while yakking

Nokia Takes Cue From Broadcom; Uses Trade Commission Loophole To Fight Qualcomm Over Patents

from the loopholes-are-fun dept

A few months ago, we pointed out that since the Supreme Court made it clear that patent injunctions were being used too often, many companies were starting to use a loophole. Rather than just going through the courts to get an injunction, they would go to the US International Trade Commission and ask it for an injunction against those they accused of patent infringement. While courts need to follow the lead of the Supreme Court, the ITC could make whatever decision it wanted on whether or not a particular product actually did infringe and whether or not an injunction should be granted. It gives patent holders a second shot, outside of the court system, to get an injunction. In fact, right after we discussed this, Broadcom used exactly that loophole to get an injunction against certain Qualcomm chips. Qualcomm has been fighting this injunction without much luck, and it seems to have encouraged others to try the same thing. Nokia and Qualcomm have been engaged in a rather vicious patent fight recently -- and suddenly Nokia has come up with a strategy of (you guessed it) asking the ITC to ban the import of Qualcomm chips for patent infringement. Wonder where that idea came from? The folks at the ITC might want to start staffing up in the division that has to review these patent injunction requests. It sounds like there's going to be plenty to do in the near future.

Filed Under: itc, loophole, patents
Companies: broadcom, nokia, qualcomm