Business, Financial & Legal - Page 144

The patent war between Apple, and what seems like every other company on Earth doesn't look to stop any time soon. A Chinese company, GooPhone, has already patented the design of the new iPhone, in China.

The new GooPhone i5, yes that's its name, was patented and released before the new iPhone was even announced (and it hasn't even really been announced yet, not until September 12). This gives the Chinese company a legal advantage over the real iPhone maker.

GooPhone i5 runs Google's Android 4.1 OS, and of course its internal goodies would be far different to that of the new iPhone's. The GooPhone i5 sports a 4-inch screen, smaller dock connector, and relocated headphone jack - all rumored to be changes included with the unreleased iPhone.

Riding on the wave of success of their super successful Galaxy S III, Samsung are poised to record a record Q3 profit of $6.2 billion. The Yonhap reports that according to analysts, Samsung could see an operating profit of $6.2 billion, up from $5.9 billion in Q2.

It wasn't too long ago that Samsung had announced they sold 20 million Galaxy S III handsets in just 100 days, as well as announcing and releasing the Galaxy Note II and the Galaxy Note 10.1.

Quarterly sales are estimated to have expanded by 24.5% to reach $45.5 billion or so, which sports a 78% year-over-year increase.

Apple, seemingly trying to strike a blow to its favorite legal adversary, has lowered its memory chip order to Samsung for the next iPhone. Samsung has long provided many components for Apple's products, even though Apple and Samsung are constantly involved in legal battles around the world.

Apple has continually been trying to diversify its suppliers and reduce the business it sends towards Samsung, a company Apple continually accuses of copying. "Samsung is still on the list of initial memory chip suppliers (for new iPhones). But Apple orders have been trending down and Samsung is making up for the reduced order from others, notably Samsung's handset business," the Reuters source said.

The reduction in orders is not expected to hurt Samsung by very much. Analysts figure that Apple's purchases of DRAM and NAND chips only make up about 2.5 percent of Samsung's business, so that is the most it could hurt Samsung if they were to completely end their business relationship.

Google has acquired the online virus scanner VirusTotal for an undisclosed amount of money. The deal appears to be a straightforward one, with VirusTotal continuing to operate independently. VirusTotal will gain access to Google's resources and infrastructure, which should help VirusTotal to continue improving their service.

According to the press release, VirusTotal had been one of Google's partners for a long time, so the business relationship with other antivirus companies and security experts should remain mostly unchanged. Google will likely look to integrate VirusTotal's scanning systems into many of their offerings.

This could be especially good for Gmail as attachments are constantly being e-mailed around. Google and VirusTotal have declined to share the acquisition price, though a Google spokesperson had the following to say:

The UK government proposed their controversial Communications Data Bill earlier this year, which would see British ISPs made to keep records of every website that their customers visit for 12 months. Of course, you can see where civil rights groups, and others, would have problems with this.

Wikipedia founder, Jimmy Wales, has stepped up to the debate and joined the opposition to the proposed bill, saying:

Wales has threatened to encrypt Wikipedia for UK-based users in order to protect their privacy. Wales adds that the data retention bill is:

The new iPhone looks to be announced next week at Apple's September 12 event, and one analyst estimates the new iPhone could sell as many as 10 million in its first week. The question is, how do Apple amass 10 million (or so) new iPhone's in a short amount of time?

Simple. Force university students to work 12 hours per day, six days per week for around $243 per month on the new iPhone. This is what Foxconn is doing, reports the Shanghai Daily. Foxconn reportedly couldn't get their soul machine to work normally, so they secured more workers from universities, as classes were suspended at the start of the new semester.

Students began working on the new iPhone last Thursday, and are being "compensated" by the $243 per month wage. One student who wished to remain anonymous, claims that the authorities had ordered the schools to round up students to help Foxconn, with the company not informing parents, or signing agreements with students. Another anonymous student said that some universities would go as far as punishing students if they tried to leave the factory.

OCZ lowered their forecast for second quarter earnings due to a shortage of NAND chips that it uses in the production of its solid state drives. This was seen as a good thing on Wall Street and both Micron's and Sandisk's shares jumped. This is because a shortage in NAND chips would stop the sliding price of flash memory that has been dropping lower in recent days due to overproduction.

Micron increased by 5.97 percent to $6.55 and Sandisk managed an 8.0 percent increase to $43.85. "Supply and demand is coming into balance with the cuts and the industry rationalizing its capacity," said Kevin Cassidy, an analyst at Stifel Nicolaus. Supply had previously been increased to meet the demand for Apple's iPad and other devices.

Decreased sales had created an overabundance of NAND chips which lead to decreased prices. Toshiba announced back in July that they would be decreasing their output by 30 percent in order to help stabilize prices. Citi analyst Glen Yeung said that the effects have yet to be fully felt across the industry.

During Motorola's event in New York, Google chairman Eric Schmidt took to the stage announcing some stellar numbers for the Mountain View-based company. Schmidt said that there are now 1.3 million Android activations every day, with 70,000 of them tablets.

How many Android devices in total? An amazing 480 million, that's just a shave under half a billion Android devices - insane. Schmidt continued, talking of how much the Android ecosystem had grown in the years gone by, where he quoted Comscore numbers that show Android is ahead at 53% of the market, and Apple's iOS with just 33%.

Schmidt did step back and say that people do question these numbers, as we don't really know how those numbers are gathered. Google's Dennis Woodside took to the stage announcing that "the new Motorola begins today", also stating "Motorola invented the technology that underpins the mobile industry". Of course he'd say that, considering Motorola is now part of the behemoth that is Google.

The judge has smacked Oracle with a $1,130,350 bill payable to Google for its legal expenses incurred during the unsuccessful lawsuit. "Google was the prevailing party in this action. Oracle initially sought six billion dollars in damages and injunctive relief but recovered nothing after nearly two years of litigation and six weeks of trial."

It's not as much as Google would have liked--they asked for over $4,000,000--but a large portion of that was fees for an eDiscovery firm, something found to be not payable. Oracle objected the claim, saying they had brought a matter of great national importance, something that would protect them from the fees:

It will be interesting to see if this ruling affects future technology litigation, for example the Apple v Samsung lawsuit. One thing is clear, the judge believes Oracle's lawsuit was pointless enough to award lawyer's fees to Google, the defendant in the case.

Finally someone is trolling Apple instead of Apple patent trolling everybody else. In China, a phone clone maker has produced an Android phone that was designed around iPhone 5 leaks. But they didn't stop there. No, they took the design to the patent office in China and received patents for the design.

The better part? They've threatened legal action if Apple tries to release the new iPhone in China as they basically own the patents for the new device, if it looks like all the leaks say it does. This is from GooPhone, a company that already has a cloned Samsung Galaxy S III on sale in China.

This easily could prevent Apple from selling the phone in China, which would be bad for Apple's bottom line. China is the fastest growing mobile market and is expected to soon be the biggest consumer of smartphones, lucrative for a company that makes smartphones. The iPhone 5 is widely expected to be unveiled on September 12 in San Francisco.

Over the weekend, Samsung were caught in a web of their own crap as it was revealed they were trying to turn two Indian tech bloggers into paid shills. Clinton Jeff and a second blogger were allegedly pressured into promoting Samsung products at the IFA event in Berlin.

It was meant to be part of Samsung's Mob!lers marketing programme, but news came out from the bloggers, who have painted quite the picture of Samsung. The original story from The Next Web shows that the two bloggers were independent bloggers, not there for any particular company, but for all the companies, to report on all products. Samsung had offered to fly them over to Berlin from India, and put them up in a hotel, how can you turn down that offer?

It turns out that Samsung had other plans for the bloggers, where once they touched down in Berlin, were asked to sign an NDA at the IFA event. They declined, and were threatened with their flights home being cancelled, and their hotel room stay finished. This would've left them stranded in a foreign country, with no way home, with the only option left to spend their own money, unexpectedly.

If you're a long-term reader of TweakTown, you'll know that I'm quite passionate in the stagnation of the PC hardware scene. I've even touted Valve as the savior to all of this, and it seems I'm being proven right more and more with each day passing.

CVG reports that they've noticed a job listing on Valve's site, where the company is looking for an 'Industrial Designer'. The post says:

This gives some serious credit to the rumored Steam Box console, or PC-like device. If we bundle the fact that Valve are working on the rumored Steam Box, the 'Big Picture Mode' that will make Steam look perfect on your Full HD TV, and the biggest fact of all: gamers want Half-Life 3 more than ever, it would seem that Valve are looking to make 2013 a big, big year for the company.

Our music collections are all precious to us, and now that they're going mostly digital, these tracks can't be passed to a friend, or family member in the case of your death. DRM, is hell, after all.

Die Hard actor, Bruce Willis, is worried that his extensive music collection on iTunes will revert its ownership back to Apple in the case of his death. Willis wants to leave his iTunes library to his three daughters, Rumer, Scout and Tallulah. Willis' lawyers are reportedly looking into the possibility of setting up "family trusts" to act as legal holders of the downloaded music, but Willis is also prepared to consider taking Apple to court over his iTunes library.

Solicitor Chris Walton, told the Daily Mail:

Clive Palmer, an Australian billionaire, is set to spend quite a bunch of cash on building a full-sized replica of the Titanic. Now, you're probably thinking a replica, would be a 1/100, or 1/1000 scale model, but this is the real deal, the real size of the original Titanic.

The design of the replica is being completed in Europe, with the construction of the ship to begin toward the end of this year in China. Palmer has said that the Titanic 2 will keep 98% of the original Titanic design, with the 2% in changes reserved for building in modern standards and regulatory requirements. Palmer says:

Why would you want to do this? Palmer says he's doing this, simply because he can:

Pirate Bay co-founder, Gottfrid Svartholm Warg, has been arrested in Phnom Penh after the Swedish government had made a request for his detention to the Cambodian.

A spokesperson for the Cambodian police has said that Cambodia doesn't have an extradition treaty with Sweden. Kirth Chantharith told the AFP:

Warg was arrested as he didn't show up for the start of his one-year jail sentence for copyright violations. Fellow Pirate Bay co-founders, Fredrik Neij and Peter Sunde both turned up for their hearings, and in return, received reduced jail sentences. The Pirate Bay have also displayed a new message on their website, stating that they are not responsible for the sharing of copyrighted content, or materials:

It looks as though Apple is getting thirsty for more Samsung blood, as they've amended their complaint with the US District Court for the Northern District of California, where the Cupertino-based company has added two versions of two Galaxy phones.

The first of which is the Galaxy Note, followed by the Galaxy S III. This case was lodged back in February, and is separate to the current Apple vs. Samsung case that saw the ban of a heap of Samsung smart devices.

This case takes aim at the Galaxy S III, it's Verizon-based version, the Galaxy Note, as well as the recently-released Galaxy Note 10.1 tablet. The total number of devices Apple are going against with just Samsung now stands at an incredible 21. According to Apple, Samsung has "continued to flood the market with copycat products".

Wondering how much Apple and Samsung paid in attorney fees for the trial? Well, we don't have those numbers, but we do have a breakdown of what some of their lawyers bill and an idea of how long they had to work for different things. Apple's lawyers spent a total of 232 hours working on just one motion for sanctions against Samsung.

The bill for those hours? $116,668.50. Not bad, eh? Sounds like some of us need a change in career. And when it's all said and done, all of that money could come directly from Samsung, as often the other party is liable for attorney's fees in a lawsuit. That's minuscule when compared to the $1+ billion in damages, but only accounts for one motion. The entire trial was likely much, much more expensive.

Samsung, to not be outdone by Apple, has released information about its expenditures for three separate motions. The total, $258,200.50, is higher than Apple's, but was for three motions instead of one. Incredibly, one of Samsung's lawyers charges over $1,000 ($1,035, to be exact), which is more than a third more than Apple's highest paid lawyer.

Things are really heating up in the Samsung vs. Apple patent lawsuits, where last week we saw Samsung slapped with a $1 billion-plus fine, as well as many of their Galaxy-branded devices removed from US retail shelves. But, and this is a big but, Samsung are waiting in the shadows, with some serious firepower.

The Korea Times is reporting that Samsung have "confirmed that it will immediately sue Apple if the latter releases products using advanced long-term evolution (LTE) mobile technology". IP research firm iRunway, earlier this year found that Samsung fully owns 10% of all LTE patents issued so far, meaning that they are definitely putting their money where their mouth is.

Now, Apple would be a bit stupid, and far behind the times to release a next-generation iPhone without LTE, so this is going to get very, very interesting. If they release the new iPhone with 3G only, we'd be looking at waiting nearly an entire year before they release another phone, which would still not include 4G. Apple don't have many moves to make here. Another thing to consider is that the Cupertino-based company already has their iPad with 4G capabilities, have Samsung been waiting for the new iPhone before they pounce?

LulzSec, a hacktivist group similar to Anonymous, has seen members getting arrested after the leader of the group started helping the FBI. The latest arrest is of Ronaldo Rivera (20), a hacker from Tempe, Arizona. He faces up to 15 years in prison if he is convicted on charges of conspiracy and unauthorized impairment of protected computers.

Rivera is said to have worked with Cody Kretsinger (24) in hacking Sony Picture's computers. During the hack in 2011, they obtained more than 1,000,000 users' personal information including passwords, email addresses, home addresses, and dates of birth. The hacking was announced and credit taken by LulzSec through a posting on Pastebin:

Curiously, the hacktivist group said the hacking cost them more than $600,000. It's not clear what that money was used for. Sony Pictures has not revealed how much the hacking has cost them, but the hacking of Sony's PlayStation Network was estimated by the company to cost $170 million to fix. It seems people can no longer hide on the Internet.

I'm sure most users have heard about the alleged eBook pricing that several publishers were involved in. Three of the major publishers that were accused of price fixing have agreed to settle with 54 District Attorneys across the United Sates. They announced the settlement in which Hachette Book Group, HarperCollins Publishers, and Simon & Schuster have agreed to pay $69 million over the alleged eBook price inflation.

"While publishers are entitled to their profits, consumers are equally entitled to a fair and open marketplace," Attorney General Jepsen said today in a statement. "This settlement will provide restitution to those customers who were harmed by this price-fixing scheme, but it also will restore competition in the eBook market for consumers' long-term benefit."

Apple has, of course, refused to to settle. Macmillan and Penguin have also declined to settle. Steve jobs could be the root cause of bringing attention to the issue when he told his biographer about offering them the agency model, which came with higher prices.