Those 200 iPhone-Related Patents Don't Seem To Be Stopping Patent Infringement Lawsuits

from the welcome-to-the-patent-thicket dept

When the iPhone was first announced, Steve Jobs proudly hyped up the 200 patents the company had filed around the various parts of the device. However, we were among those who wondered what the point of all those patents were -- as most of the concepts were widely known, and Apples real innovation was putting them all together in a nice usable package. And, if Steve Jobs thought that the announcement of those 200 patents would scare off patent infringement lawsuits, he was clearly mistaken. The iPhone has already been accused of patent infringement for the touchscreen and the virtual keyboard, and now Klausner Technologies has sued the company for its visual voicemail offering. If Klausner sounds familiar to you, that's because it's the company that sued both AOL and Vonage for daring to display voicemail information on a screen (yes, apparently that concept is patented). Vonage, of course, recently settled with Klausner, giving it the cash to take on a big fish like Apple. Considering Apple's notorious willingness to pay up when accused of patent infringement, even on the most ridiculous patents, this strategy probably makes sense for Klausner, but it's hard to see how it furthers the cause of innovation.

Filed Under: iphone, patent thicket, patents
Companies: apple, klausner

But Do We Still Need Gov't Intervention To Open Mobile Networks?

from the or-does-competition-work? dept

A month and a half ago, Walt Mossberg wrote up an article saying that government intervention was needed to get US mobile phone operators to open up their networks. I took issue with that notion, noting that it wasn't as simple as Mossberg made out, and there wasn't enough evidence that government intervention was needed or that it would help. In fact, we pointed out that competitive pressures were already pushing mobile operators, with the exception of Verizon Wireless, away from the walled garden model -- and while they hadn't adopted truly open models, it was likely to come with time and increased competition. And, in fact, as we noted last week, Verizon Wireless has responded to these competitive pressures by promising to open up (the reality of that promise remains to be seen).

With that in mind, I was a little disappointed to read Mossberg's take on Verizon Wireless' move. Mossberg cautiously commends Verizon Wireless, withholding full judgment until all the details are out -- which makes complete sense, and is a position I agree with. However, Mossberg fails to note that this (and other such moves) have all happened due to competitive pressures, rather than government fiat, and doesn't retract his call for government intervention. While it absolutely is true that the mobile operators remain too closed these days (even once Verizon Wireless details its plans), what we're seeing is how market pressures tend to drive markets toward openness in much more natural ways than by involving government intervention. The second the government got involved, lobbyists from the mobile operators would make sure that huge loopholes were slipped in that would likely make things worse for consumers, not better. Like Mossberg and many others, I'm frustrated and annoyed by the limitations put on mobile phone systems by operators, but I'm confident that pressure from within the industry and from outside of it (see the recent work of Apple and Google for a start) will eventually force the operators to open up -- and it won't take long for them to realize that the end result is better for everyone, including the operators themselves.

Filed Under: mobile phones, net neutrality, walt mossberg, wsj
Companies: verizon wireless

BBC Takes Six Months To Not Really Criticize Its WiFi Scaremongering Report

from the that's-the-best-you-can-do? dept

You may recall that back in May the BBC's "Panorama" TV show was accused of running a scaremongering TV program about the supposed "dangers" of WiFi on children. There were numerous problems with the program, from bad science to bad reporting. You would think that the BBC might take those sorts of accusations seriously. Apparently, it was enough for the BBC's Editorial Complaints Unit to take a look at the issue. It took the ECU six months, but its report is out and it admits that Panorama made some mistakes, but really only cops to one particular mistake: that it presented the one dissenter on the program in a very biased light. It doesn't seem to say anything about the fact that a major source for the program happens to sell equipment designed to test how much "radiation" there is as well as products of questionable scientific value to "protect" you from such radiation (radiation protecting beekeeper hat anyone?). The whole thing was such a joke that even the kids in the school where some of the program was filmed pointed out how unscientific the experiment was. Unfortunately, the BBC doesn't seem to address any of that in its review of the program at all. Perhaps we'll need to wait another six months.

Filed Under: bad science, dangers, scaremongering, wifi
Companies: bbc

Sprint Turns Down Offer For Money, Help From SK Telecom

from the things-are-getting-interesting dept

It's been an interesting week in the wireless arena. First Verizon Wireless promised to tear down some of its walled garden, then it announced plans to use LTE as its next generation wireless technology... and now the news comes out that Sprint has turned down an offer of a $5 billion offer from SK Telecom and Providence Equity Partners. There were some strings attached, including bringing back Tim Donahue to run Sprint. Donahue was the head of Nextel when Sprint and Nextel merged, but left soon after the merger was done. Personality-wise, people have often noted how Donahue was different than the folks at Sprint, so perhaps it's no surprise that Sprint isn't interested, even as the company is desperately seeking a CEO following the ouster of Gary Forsee.

What's more interesting than the CEO job or the money, however, is the question of what SK Telecom is playing at here. The company has invested heavily in its US MVNO joint venture Helio, which was announced nearly three years ago to great fanfare, but hasn't lived up to the hype (though, it has managed to survive where many MVNOs have collapsed). SK Telecom, like Japan's NTT DoCoMo before it, keeps looking for investment opportunities outside their home countries, but never seem to be able to repeat the successes they've had back home. DoCoMo, you may recall, had a deal with AT&T Wireless that turned into something of a disaster for everyone, so having SK Telecom assisting Sprint is hardly a slam dunk, despite its success back in Korea. SK Telecom seemed to pitch part of the benefit of working with Sprint being its experience with WiMax in South Korea, but so far, that experience is anything but encouraging. It's also worth wondering if such an investment would eventually lead to Sprint taking over Helio to consolidate SK Telecom's focus (alternatively, some might point out that since Helio uses Sprint's network, SK Telecom's investment offer could even be seen as a way to protect Helio's network).

What is clear is that Sprint needs some leadership and some direction, and it needs it quickly. With Verizon Wireless' LTE announcement, the race for next generation wireless technologies got a lot more interesting. While Sprint may have had a pretty big head start, the more it staggers around trying to find a CEO and a plan, the more it cedes to the other players who at least have the appearance of having a comprehensive strategy in place (the reality may not match the PR spin, of course). The SK Telecom deal may have provided both a leader and some direction, but clearly the company's current board didn't appear thrilled with either. Don't expect this to end here, though. There may be additional attempts by SKT, and it may cause others to wake up and pay attention as well. Sprint may end up with a leader and a strategy thrust upon it, whether it wants it or not.

Filed Under: investments, lte, wimax, wireless
Companies: providence equity partners, sk telecom, sprint, verizon wireless

If You Define the Market Narrowly Enough, Monopolies Are Everywhere

from the fun-with-definitions dept

It's almost become a cliche to note the decline of Microsoft as a competitive force in the software industry. True, it's still a large and profitable company, but it's been consistently unsuccessful in its attempts to dominate new markets the way it did in the 1990s. The XBox and Zune are fine products, but they're not market leaders. Neither are its software offerings. Microsoft's mobile OS is getting clobbered by Symbian and faces more stiff competition from Blackberries, iPhones, and soon Google phones. Its online offerings often run in third place behind Google and Yahoo. Internet Explorer is still the leading browser, but competition from Firefox and Safari have brought its market share down from 95 percent in 2004 to 82 percent today. This sure looks to me like a vigorously competitive market.

However, in recent filings, ten states and the District of Columbia argued that Microsoft is still a monopoly facing no serious competition from Google, Mozilla, or other firms. They're seeking to have federal monitoring of Microsoft's business practices under antitrust law extended until 2012. To make their case, they've stuck to the narrow definition of the relevant market they adopted in the 1990s, arguing that Microsoft has a monopoly for "Intel-compatible PC operating systems." I'm not sure that definition made sense in the 1990s, but it certainly doesn't make sense now. Microsoft's smartest competitors haven't attempted to launch a frontal assault on the company's operating system business. Instead, they've focused on beating Microsoft in related markets, including search engines, mobile phones, music players, and consoles. Companies like Apple and Google now enjoy commanding market shares in those markets, and their dominant position in those markets gives them considerable leverage and customer loyalty. If Microsoft forced its customers to choose between Windows or iTunes, or between Windows or Google, a lot of them would choose the latter. There's no longer any serious reason to worry that Microsoft's large Windows market share will allow it to squelch innovation in the technology industry, because Microsoft now faces a lot more competition on a lot more fronts than it did in 1998. The rise of web-based applications has made it far easier for companies to get their products into consumers hands, and the rapidly-growing mobile market gives companies some new platforms to target that aren't controlled by Microsoft. Most of this competition is outside of the "Intel-compatible PC operating system" market, but that definition of the market was always somewhat arbitrary, and it looks ludicrously narrow now.

Filed Under: monopolies
Companies: microsoft

The Fourth Amendment Two-Step

from the where-your-privacy-has-gone dept

Tom Lee has already weighed in with an excellent post on the news that law enforcement officials are often able to turn cell phones into real-time tracking devices without having to make the traditional showing of probable cause required for a search warrant. But it may be worth lingering a bit over the tortuous legal history that is being used to justify a form of snooping that is, intuitively, almost as intrusive as a conventional physical search.

The problem is a series of precedents that, as legal scholar Richard Posner has observed, enable the government to do a two-step end run around the Fourth Amendment. In the 1974 case California Bankers Association v. Schulz, the Supreme Court ruled that the Bank Secrecy Act, which required financial institutions to collect certain kinds of information from customers, did not run afoul of the Fourth Amendment's privacy protections. (Similarly, Enhanced 911 rules implemented in 1998 required telecom providers to make their networks capable of pinpointing the locations of cell users for the convenience of 911 operators.) The Court reasoned that "the mere maintenance by the bank of records without any requirement that they be disclosed to the Government" did not constitute an "illegal search and seizure." But two years later, in U.S. v. Miller, the Court determined that individuals lost their "expectation of privacy" in such information once it had been turned over to a third party, such as a bank. And businesses such as banks, unlike individuals, could not claim Fourth Amendment privacy interests in their records.

That brings us to 1979's Smith v. Maryland, in which the Court determined that no "search" was conducted, for Fourth Amendment purposes, when police sought to obtain from telephone companies a list of the numbers dialed from a particular telephone. The Court's reasoning was two pronged: In part, the justices relied upon the "third party" rationale of Miller. But they also noted the ways that such information gathering was distinct from, and less intrusive than, eavesdropping on the calls themselves: "Neither the purport of any communication between the caller and the recipient of the call, their identities, nor whether the call was even completed is disclosed by pen registers."

Different jurisdictions have differed on how this logic applies in the case of cell tracking, where there's the added hurdle of language in the Communications Assistance for Law Enforcement Act that would appear to forbid using a mobile phone as a GPS device without a full-fledged search warrant. It seems likely that, at least in the near term, judges will rely on such statutory constraints to check such tracking. But it also looks like a good reason for the courts to revisit this whole line of Fourth Amendment jurisprudence, and reconsider whether, when so much data about us is stored in a variety of "third party" databases, it makes sense to presume citizens have no reasonable expectation of privacy in such information, even when the "third party" has pledged not to share it.

Filed Under: fourth amendment, gps, mobile phone tracking, privacy

Mobile Advertisers Can't Resist Thinking That A Single Call To Action Means Universal Rights To Bug People

from the pull,-not-push dept

For years, we've been trying to convince advertisers that mobile advertising needs to be about "pull" rather than "push" advertising. Since mobile users are "on the go" and often busy with something else, interrupting them with their mobile phone is going to be seen as a tremendous intrusion, often pissing off most recipients. Instead, the focus should be on setting up situations where the ads are effectively "called" by the user who is specifically looking for something (think Google ads, rather than pop up ads). For example, having a billboard that offers someone something if they punch in a code on their phone. Or, perhaps, making it easy for someone to proactively check if there are discounts at nearby coffee shops -- rather than simply bombarding them with offers as they pass-by coffee shops.

Unfortunately, it looks like some advertisers are only getting half of the message. While they understand the importance of there being some kind of "call to action" by the user to initiate any kind of advertising relationship, many seem to think that after that initial call to action, users are more open to receiving ongoing communications. That's unlikely to be true -- as many users may want a particular type of communication at one time, but will not be in the mood to get something similar the next day when they're in a rush to get somewhere. The companies pay lip service to not bothering people by saying things like: "If there is no response after several times, the phone will stop sending alerts." However, by that point, you've already annoyed the person "several times" after they only opted-in to hear what you had to say once. It's hard to see how that's beneficial at all.

Filed Under: mobile ads, pull, push, spam
Companies: clear channel

Verizon Wireless Responds To Competitive Pressures By Promising To Open Its Network

from the good-news dept

Verizon Wireless is making big headlines today by announcing that it intends to open up their network to third party devices next year. This is great news. As Columbia law professor Tim Wu documented in an excellent paper earlier this year, the mobile device market has long been hampered by the "tar pit of misery, pain, and destruction" that is the wireless carriers' process for approving mobile devices and software. Wu found that Verizon Wireless was one of the worst offenders, micromanaging which devices could be used on its networks and insisting the vendors cripple features like Bluetooth or WiFi that might undermine its own business strategies. In our write-up of Wu's paper, Carlo argued that Wu's heart was in the right place but that talk of "wireless network neutrality" regulations was premature, because sooner or later companies would be forced by competitive pressures to drop their walled gardens.

That appears to be happening surprisingly quickly. Back in February, Carlo noted that Verizon Wireless was the last hold-out for the old "walled garden" approach, with the other carriers having already taken steps to open their networks. Two recent announcements—Apple's iPhone and Google's Android—likely spurred Verizon Wireless to follow suit. The iPhone is far from an open device, but it is a clear example of what can be accomplished if a technology company is given the flexibility to design a mobile computer without having to kowtow to wireless carriers' whims. The success of the iPhone has put pressure on the other carriers to come up with a competitive response, and building a device as compelling as the iPhone almost requires that technologists be given a free hand in making design decisions Sprint and T-Mobile's support for Google's relatively open Android operating system strengthened the impression that Verizon Wireless was the last hold-out for the walled garden approach.

Today's announcement is a smart business decision for a number of reasons. First and foremost, the way to succeed in high-tech industries is to be the platform that other companies use to build their products and services. If Verizon follows through on its promises and opens up its network, it will dramatically reduce the time and frustration required to get a new device approved for use on Verizon's network. That will make it the logical partner for innovative small companies seeking to launch a new mobile device, service, or software product. It will also make Verizon Wireless an attractive partner for firms wanting to make non-phone mobile devices. This announcement also takes the wind out of the sails of advocates for government-mandated open networks. Verizon Wireless doubtless prefers to open its network on its own terms and its own schedule, instead of having its hand forced by government regulators.

There are still a lot of questions to be answered: most importantly, how much the bandwidth will cost. If it sets the price too high, it will be hard for Verizon Wireless' partners to make a profit. Additionally, we won't know until we see the exact terms how open their "open" network really will be. It wouldn't be the first time a technology company started using the word "open" to describe fundamentally non-open products. But if the terms and price turn out to be reasonable this announcement should provide a big boost to innovation in the wireless space in the coming years.

Filed Under: net neutrality, open, open access, wireless
Companies: verizon wireless

Qualcomm's Small Patent Victories

from the it's-something dept

Qualcomm has always been a strong supporter of the patent system, as it was the basis for much of its revenue over the past decade. However, lately, the company has been getting hit left and right by patent lawsuits against it. Last week, though, the company ended up with a few minor (and perhaps temporary) victories against opponents. First, the International Trade Commission tossed out a complaint from Nokia asking the ITC to ban the import of Qualcomm chips. Nokia had simply taken a page from Broadcom, who had successfully used the ITC loophole to get a second shot at Qualcomm over its patents. Given how often companies have been starting to use this loophole, it's nice to see that the ITC doesn't always rollover for patent holders.

In the meantime, speaking of Broadcom, we had noted last month that thanks to a Supreme Court ruling that raised the bar for declaring "willful" infringement of a patent, the judge in the Qualcomm-Broadcom suit had given Broadcom a choice. Either retry the case under the new rules, or drop the "willful" part and get less money from Qualcomm. Broadcom has now chosen the latter option, and will accept a smaller payout from Qualcomm for infringement. Of course, it's not all good news for Qualcomm. Nokia still has lawsuits going against Qualcomm, with one getting underway in the UK this week. Broadcom is still seeking the courts to rule for an injunction blocking the import of certain Qualcomm chips as well (even as the ITC is already helping out on that front). Once again, no one seems willing to explain why Broadcom gets to take two whacks at Qualcomm over the same exact issue. In the meantime, while it would be nice to think that these recent messy lawsuits would give Qualcomm a chance to rethink some of its beliefs about the patent system, somehow that seems unlikely to happen any time soon.

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

Kindle's Not All Bad: It Might Be A Turning Point For Non-Phone Wireless Devices

from the there's-always-something dept

I agree almost entirely with Tim Lee's assessment of the Kindle e-book reader, posted Monday on these pages, but as a wireless and telecom analyst, there are aspects of the device that are interesting and important - unfortunately for Amazon, they aren't going to help make the Kindle a success. The most interesting factor is that Amazon is basically launching an MVNO, called Whispernet that will use the Sprint EV-DO network. It certainly won't be the first MVNO on Sprint, and it won't be the first mobile device maker to brand the wireless service as their own (think Palm VII's Palm.net, or Blackberry.net when they both resold Mobitex service). But the Kindle is one the first mainstream consumer electronics device we've seen that is not a computer and not a phone but which still connects to a mobile broadband network.

This portends a future (that Sprint has been talking up a lot lately with WiMAX) where myriad consumer electronics devices like cameras, GPS devices, sensors, signs, etc. all connect to the "cloud" and have service either bundled in retail prices, or into some other service fee like Amazon is charging for content. This kind of device is a break from the normally carrier-controlled handsets we usually see, and is interesting for that reason alone. It's also a break from the $80 rule, where non-phones can only connect to cellular data for $80/mo. Since the Kindle device has limited Internet functionality, Amazon can predict average monthly EV-DO throughput per device, and negotiate a much better wholesale data rate from Sprint than $80, and can then afford to bundle that into content pricing. Don't get me wrong -- I don't agree with the content pricing on the Kindle. But the launch of an "Open Access" consumer electronics device with wide area network access bundled in has got me excited. Imagine now a GPS device from Garmin or TomTom that comes with a cellular radio for traffic updates, local fuel prices, etc, and the data plan is bundled into the retail price. Wow! Consumer electronics devices that could work right out of the box with full mobile connectivity, and a carrier that is willing to wholesale reasonably for that network connection! The times are finally changing.

Filed Under: e-books, kindle, mvnos, wireless