Posted 11/06/09 at 08:27:58 PM by Ryan Whitwam

It looks like you can expect Skype to continue functioning as normal. A settlement has finally been reached with the parties, including eBay and Skype founders, Niklas Zennström and Janus Friis. The legal battle started when eBay agreed to sell a 65% stake in Skype to Silver Lake Partners on September 1st. The founders sued, claiming that eBay was engaging in copyright infringement. As it turns out, eBay never actually owned the core technology behind Skype, called Global Index.

According to the settlement, Zennström and Friis, will join the investor group that is purchasing Skype. They will contribute software from their new venture, Joltid. In return, they will receive a 14% stake in Skype. When the sale is completed, eBay will be paid a cool $1.9 billion. Though, this is much less than the original purchase price for Skype. Though, the online auction house will also retain 30% of Skype.

Getting all the technology under one roof again should settle the issue of Skype’s intellectual property once and for all. Do you use Skype on a regular basis? Were you worried about its future?

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Posted 11/03/09 at 07:33:11 PM by Ryan Whitwam

Verizon thought they were so clever. Big Red’s recent “There’s a map for that” adverts seem to have ruffled some feathers over at AT&T. Now AT&T has filed a federal lawsuit against Verizon for false advertising. The issue comes down to the maps shown in the commercial.

The ad compares 3G coverage areas for the two wireless providers side by side. The red Verizon map, of course, looks much more filled in. AT&T’s map looks sparse by comparison. What many less savvy consumers might not follow is that this is only showing AT&T’s 3G, not EDGE. While Verizon’s entire network is 3G, AT&T still has significant areas covered only by slower EDGE service. AT&T claims that the ad leads people to believe that AT&T does not have coverage at all in the un-highlighted areas.

Indeed, the original version of the ad said that AT&T users outside the highlighted area were “out of touch”. Verizon removed that line and noted that non-3G voice and data were available, but AT&T still wasn’t happy. It’s not really an enviable position for AT&T to be in. They have to argue that Verizon should be making it clear that the AT&T network is available in more places – it’s just very, very slow. Everyone settle in, this might be entertaining.

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Posted 11/03/09 at 02:26:47 PM by Bart Salisbury

The Nook is off to a rough start. Spring Design has sued Barnes & Noble over what it alleges are the misappropriation of trade secrets and the violation of a non-disclosure agreement. Spring Design is claiming that pirated design features from its dual-screen Alex eReader, incorporating them in to Barnes & Noble’s Nook eReader.

The point of contention for Spring Design is something it calls the Duet Navigator. This design feature consists of a gray-scale upper screen for reading text, and a lower color screen for navigation. Interestingly, the Nook possesses the same basic design feature. Spring Design says it started filing patents on the Alex back in 2006. (The patent on the Duet Navigator is still pending.) Barnes & Noble apparently co-opted the ideas while working with Spring Design earlier this year.

Darren Murph, over at Engadget, made the early call on this: “Judging by the hastily prepared web site coincidentally appearing on the eve of the B&N device launch, and the domain’s registrar, Albert Teng, who has numerous patent applications (not patents granted) covering ‘electronic devices having complementary dual-displays,’ we’d say this announcement is quite possibly a desperate attempt to lay claim on intellectual property rights instead of a real product with real manufacturers and real content partners.”

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Posted 10/23/09 at 05:46:20 PM by Jason Barry

Nokia has lost significant mobile domination due to new smartphone players, namely Apple. Well, Nokia isn’t sitting idly by; it is suing Apple for the infringement of 10 patents “fundamental for devices using GSM, UMTS and/or local area network standards” according to Nokia. The patents all pertain to wireless data, speech coding, security, and encryption inherent in all iPhone models.

Without a doubt, this will be a long drawn out battle. Both companies have enormous legal teams and huge amounts of cash. It is also extremely unlikely to affect either bottom-line. According to Avian Securities analyst Matthew Thornton, “we have a hard time seeing a material risk to either company.”

The frivolous lawsuits are getting a touch out of hand. At the same time, if you stand on the shoulders of technological giants, the least you can do is offer them a cold lemonade. What other choice do these companies have?

Image Credit: Wired

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Posted 10/22/09 at 08:13:17 PM by Paul Lilly

AT&T has a bone to pick with several big-name LCD makers, and it will do it in court. The telco has sued a number of display manufacturers over allegedly fixing the price of more than 300 million mobile LCD screens.

Those on the receiving end of the lawsuit include Samsung, LG Display, Optronics, Sharp, and Chungwa. According to the lawsuit, the display makers "formed an international cartel illegally to restrict competition in the United States in the market for LCD panels."

AT&T called the whole situation a "conspiracy," accusing the defendants of agreeing to eliminate competition and fix LCD panel prices that they knew would be incorporated in LCD products and sold in the U.S.

This isn't the first price fixing scandal to hit the LCD industry, nor is it the first time LG, Chunghwa, and Sharp have been tied to price fixing allegations. All three agreed to plead guilty to similar charges in November 2008 and to pay $585 million in criminal fines.

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Posted 10/20/09 at 09:50:01 AM by Paul Lilly

Robert Moffat, IBM's highest ranking hardware executive and front runner to carry the CEO torch, has been indicted on chargers of insider trading. So has Rajiv Goel, a managing director of Intel subsidiary, Intel Capital, and Anil Kumar, a director at consulting firm McKinsey & Co. and adviser to AMD.

Insider trading carries some serious repercussions, and if found guilty, all three could be looking at prison time. And it's not looking good. Thanks to wiretapped phone conversations and statements from an informant, SEC investigators believe they can show how the trio used inside information and well-timed trades to accumulate more than $25 million in illegal gains.

One alleged illegal instance includes Goel giving billionaire investor Raj Rajaratnam a heads up on January 8, 2007 that Intel share prices would likely rise over the next couple of days. According to the feds, this prompted Rajaratnam to purchase 1 million shares of Intel stock, and then 500,000 more on January 11. On January 16, he unloaded all of his Intel stock, netting about $1 million profits in a matter of four days.

Goel is also accused of alerting Rajaratnam about an impending deal between Clearwire and Sprint, which ended up netting him another $750,000 in profits.

There's a ton more to the scandal, all of which you can read here.

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Posted 10/15/09 at 05:48:37 PM by Jason Barry

Intel’s piranha legal team is currently sinking its teeth into AMD as part of its defense in the antitrust case they lost across the pond. Let the feeding begin.

Intel drew first blood asking the courts to reprimand AMD for failing to retain documents pertaining to their filing against Intel back in June of 2005. Further, they are salting the wounds by claiming that not only were the documents lost, despite AMD boasting a new document retention system, but also AMD covered up its efforts to recover said documents.

Intel claims in a court filing “AMD failed to begin retaining documents when it reasonably anticipated the litigation, something that is required by law.”

It has gotten ugly quick and this is only the beginning. Do you think Intel is merely following legal protocol, going for the throat, or just being petty?

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Posted 10/12/09 at 09:57:46 AM by Pulkit Chandna

Facebook may not resemble a likely victim of patent trolls but a couple of companies still wish to probe its vulnerability when pounded with patent suits. Mekiki Co Ltd, which runs the Japanese social networking site Samurai Social Network, has filed a patent infringement suit against Facebook, claiming that it infringes three of its patents related to a “human relationships registering system."

From what we understand, the Japanese firm has called into question the use of the very axe that helps break the ice on social networks like Facebook: friendship requests. Mekiki was awarded US Patent #6,879,985 in 2005 for, among other things, “a message communicator configured to communicate a first message from one member to another member and configured to communicate a respective response to the first message from the another member to the one member, the response establishing a relationship between the one member and the another member.”

Boston-based Tele-Publishing Inc also believes that certain Facebook features contravene one of its patents. US Patent #6,253,216 was awarded to Tele-Publishing way back in 2001 and deals with the “method and apparatus” used for serving a personal page. The subject of its patent infringement claim appears to be Facebook’s privacy feature, which protects all the dazzling nymphets and the handsome hunks from the prying eyes of cyber stalkers. In fact, most contemporary social networks let their users specify who gets to view what.

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