Business, Financial & Legal News - Page 236

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.

Our goal is simple: to help keep you safe on the web. And we've worked hard to ensure that the services we offer continually improve. But as a small, resource-constrained company, that can sometimes be challenging. So we're delighted that Google, a long-time partner, has acquired VirusTotal. This is great news for you, and bad news for malware generators, because:

VirusTotal will continue to operate independently, maintaining our partnerships with other antivirus companies and security experts. This is an exciting step forward. Google has a long track record working to keep people safe online and we look forward to fighting the good fight together with them.

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:

If we find that UK ISPs are mandated to keep track of every single webpage that you read at Wikipedia, I am almost certain we would immediately move to a default of encrypting all communication to the UK, so that the local ISP would only be able to see that you are speaking to Wikipedia, not what you are reading.

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:

Oracle initially alleged infringement of seven patents and 132 claims but each claim ultimately was either dismissed with prejudice or found to be non-infringed by the jury. Oracle also lost on its primary copyright claim for Java APIs.... While it is true that a copyright issue presented, copyrightability of APIs, was of great importance to the computer industry, this is not enough to deny costs. The media attention following this case was due in large part because Oracle crafted broad, and ultimately overreaching, claims of copyright infringement. A close follower of this case will know that Oracle did not place great importance on its copyright claims until after its asserted patents started disappearing upon PTO reexamination (indeed, Oracle's first damages report barely mentioned copyright claims). Oracle did not bring its API copyright claim for the benefit of addressing "a landmark issue of national importance," but instead fell back on an overreaching (albeit somewhat novel) theory of copyright infringement for its own financial interests late in litigation. On these facts, Oracle has failed to overcome the presumption of awarding costs to Google.

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.