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Groupon Starts Fight With IBM
May 16, 2016 by admin
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The online marketplace Groupon Inc has filed a lawsuit against IBM Corp, accusing it of infringing a patent related to technology that assists businesses to solicit customers based on the customers’ locations at a given moment.
Groupon filed its lawsuit on Monday with the federal court in its hometown of Chicago, two months after IBM accused Groupon of patent infringement in a separate lawsuit.
“IBM is trying to shed its status as a dial-up-era dinosaur” by infringing the rights of “current” technology companies such as Groupon, according to Groupon spokesman Bill Roberts.
The latest lawsuit concerns IBM’s WebSphere Commerce platform, which Groupon said lets merchants send messages to customers with GPS-enabled devices based on their real-time locations, and their use of social media including Facebook.
Groupon said the platform infringes a December 2010 patent, and that it deserves royalties based on the “billions of dollars” of revenue that Armonk, New York-based IBM has received through its infringement.
“IBM, a relic of once-great 20th Century technology firms, has now resorted to usurping the intellectual property of companies born this millennium,” Groupon said in its lawsuit.
On March 2, IBM accused Groupon in a federal lawsuit in Delaware of infringing four patents, including two related to Prodigy, a late-1980s forerunner to the Internet.
“Over the past three years, IBM has attempted to conclude a fair and reasonable patent license agreement with Groupon, and we are disappointed that Groupon is seeking to divert attention from its patent infringement by suing,” Shelton said.
The Chicago case is Groupon Inc v International Business Machines Corp, U.S. District Court, Northern District of Illinois, No. 16-05064. The Delaware case is International Business Machines Corp v Groupon Inc, U.S. District Court, District of Delaware, No. 16-00122.
Source-http://www.thegurureview.net/aroundnet-category/groupon-gets-into-patent-fight-with-ibm.html
Google, Microsoft Drop Regulatory Complaints
May 2, 2016 by admin
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Microsoft Corp and Alphabet Inc’s Google have reached a deal to drop all the regulatory complaints against each other, the companies told Reuters.
“Microsoft has agreed to withdraw its regulatory complaints against Google, reflecting our changing legal priorities. We will continue to focus on competing vigorously for business and for customers,” a Microsoft spokesperson said in an email.
Google, in a separate email, said the companies would want to compete vigorously based on the merits of their products, not in “legal proceedings”.
The companies in September agreed to bury all patent infringement litigations against each other, settling 18 cases in the United States and Germany.
“… Following our patent agreement, we’ve now agreed to withdraw regulatory complaints against one another,” Google said on Friday.
Google’s rivals had reached out to U.S. regulators alleging that the Internet services company unfairly uses its Android system to win online advertising, people with knowledge of matter told Reuters last year.
The European Commission also accused Google last year of distorting internet search results to favor its shopping service, harming both rivals and consumers.
Source-http://www.thegurureview.net/aroundnet-category/google-microsoft-drop-regulatory-complaints-against-each-other.html
IBM Goes After Groupon
March 14, 2016 by admin
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IBM has filed suit against online deals marketplace Groupon for infringing four of its patents, including two that emerged from Prodigy, the online service launched by IBM and partners ahead of the World Wide Web.
Groupon has built its business model on the use of IBM’s patents, according to the complaint filed Wednesday in the federal court for the District of Delaware. “Despite IBM’s repeated attempts to negotiate, Groupon refuses to take a license, but continues to use IBM’s property,” according to the computing giant, which is asking the court to order Groupon to halt further infringement and pay damages.
IBM alleges that websites under Groupon’s control and its mobile applications use the technology claimed by the patents-in-suit for online local commerce marketplaces to connect merchants to consumers by offering goods and services at a discount.
About a year ago, IBM filed a similar lawsuit around the same patents against online travel company Priceline and three subsidiaries.
To develop the Prodigy online service that IBM launched with partners in the 1980s, the inventors of U.S. patents 5,796,967 and 7,072,849 developed new methods for presenting applications and advertisements in an interactive service that would take advantage of the computing power of each user’s PC and reduce demand on host servers, such as those used by Prodigy, IBM said in its complaint against Groupon.
“The inventors recognized that if applications were structured to be comprised of ‘objects’ of data and program code capable of being processed by a user’s PC, the Prodigy system would be more efficient than conventional systems,” it added.
Groupon is also accused of infringing U.S. Patent No.5,961,601, which was developed to find a better way of preserving state information in Internet communications, such as between an online merchant and a customer, according to IBM. Online merchants can use the state information to keep track of a client’s product and service selections while the client is shopping and then use that information when the client decides to make a purchase, something that stateless Internet communications protocols like HTTP cannot offer, it added.
Source- http://www.thegurureview.net/aroundnet-category/ibm-files-patent-infringement-lawsuit-against-groupon.html
Microsoft, Google Cease Fire In Global Patent Deal
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Microsoft has been pursuing a more collaborative approach under CEO Satya Nadella, engaging longtime rivals like Salesforce, VMware and Apple. There hasn’t been much love between Microsoft and Google, but an announcement on Wednesday points towards an easing of those tensions.
Google and Microsoft have reached a broad agreement on patent matters, with a legal settlement ending some 20 lawsuits between the companies in the U.S. and Germany. Financial terms weren’t disclosed, but the deal brings a laundry list of lawsuits to a close.
“Microsoft and Google are pleased to announce an agreement on patent issues,” they said in a joint statement. “As part of the agreement, the companies will dismiss all pending patent infringement litigation between them, including cases related to Motorola Mobility.”
They also agreed to collaborate on patent matters and work together “to benefit our customers.”
The suits that have been settled include those related to mobile phones, video encoding and Wi-Fi technologies. That doesn’t mean Microsoft has given up its campaign to collect royalties from Android device makers for the mobile operating system’s alleged infringement of Microsoft patents.
It’s not clear from the statement what patent matters the companies will be working on together in the future, but changes have already begun. The two companies agreed earlier this month to work together (alongside other firms like Netflix and Mozilla) on a royalty-free video codec.
It remains to be seen if the settlement will lead to more work between Microsoft and Google in other areas. A major sticking point for consumers has been the lack of a Google-made YouTube app for smartphones and tablets running Windows.
Source-http://www.thegurureview.net/aroundnet-category/microsoft-google-cease-fire-in-global-patent-deal.html
RadioShack Plans To Sell Customer Data
April 22, 2015 by admin
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RadioShack plans to keep moving forward with its plan to sell its customer data, despite opposition from a number of states.
The company has asked a bankruptcy court for approval for a second auction of its assets, which includes the consumer data.
The state of Texas, which is leading the action by the states, opposed the sale of personally identifiable information (PII), citing the online and in-store privacy policies of the bankrupt consumer electronics retailer.
The state claimed that it found from a RadioShack deposition that the personal information of 117 million customers could be involved. But it learned later from testimony in court that the number of customer files offered for sale might be reduced to around 67 million.
In the first round of the sale, RadioShack sold about 1,700 stores to hedge fund Standard General, which entered into an agreement to set up 1,435 of these as co-branded stores with wireless operator Sprint. Some other assets were also sold in the auction.
The sale of customer data, including PII, was withdrawn from the previous auction, though RadioShack did not rule out that it could be put up for sale at a later date.
The case could have privacy implications for the tech industry as it could set a precedent, for example, for large Internet companies holding consumer data, if they happen to go bankrupt.
Texas has asked the U.S. Bankruptcy Court for the District of Delaware for a case management order to ensure that in any motion for sale of the PII, RadioShack should be required to provide information on the kind of personal data that is up for sale and the number of customers that will be affected.
On Monday, Texas asked the court that its motion be heard ahead of RadioShack’s motion for approval to auction more assets.
The court had ordered in March the appointment of a consumer privacy ombudsman in connection with the potential sale of the consumer data including PII. RadioShack said in a filing Friday that it intends to continue working with the ombudsman and the states with regard to any potential sale of PII, but did not provide details.
Uber Suffers A Data Breach
The names and license plate numbers of about 50,000 Uber drivers were exposed in a security breach last year, the company revealed on Friday.
Uber found out about a possible breach of its systems in September, and a subsequent investigation revealed an unauthorized third party had accessed one of its databases four months earlier, the company said.
The files accessed held the names and license plate numbers of about 50,000 current and former drivers, which Uber described as a “small percentage” of the total. About 21,000 of the affected drivers are in California. The company has several hundred thousand drivers altogether.
It’s in the process of notifying the affected drivers and advised them to monitor their credit reports for fraudulent transactions and accounts. It said it hadn’t received any reports yet of actual misuse of the data.
Uber will provide a year of free identity protection service to the affected drivers, it said, which has become fairly standard for such breaches.
The company said it had filed a “John Doe” lawsuit Friday to help it confirm the identity of the party responsible for the breach.
Will Marriott Block Wi-Fi
January 5, 2015 by admin
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The U.S. Federal Communications Commission will render a decision on whether to establish rules regarding hotels’ ability to block personal Wi-Fi hotspots inside their buildings, a practice that recently earned Marriott International a $600,000 fine.
In August, Marriott, business partner Ryman Hospitality Properties and trade group the American Hotel and Lodging Association asked the FCC to clarify when hotels can block outside Wi-Fi hotspots in order to protect their internal Wi-Fi services.
In that petition, the hotel group asked the agency to “declare that the operator of a Wi-Fi network does not violate [U.S. law] by using FCC-authorized equipment to monitor and mitigate threats to the security and reliability of its network,” even when taking action causes interference to mobile devices.
The comment period for the petition ended Friday, so now it’s up to the FCC to either agree to Marriott’s petition or disregard it.
However, the FCC did act in October, slapping Marriott with the fine after customers complained about the practice. In their complaint, customers alleged that employees of Marriott’s Gaylord Opryland Hotel and Convention Center in Nashville used signal-blocking features of a Wi-Fi monitoring system to prevent customers from connecting to the Internet through their personal Wi-Fi hotspots. The hotel charged customers and exhibitors $250 to $1,000 per device to access Marriott’s Wi-Fi network.
During the comment period, several groups called for the agency to deny the hotel group’s petition.
The FCC made clear in October that blocking outside Wi-Fi hotspots is illegal, Google’s lawyers wrote in a comment. “While Google recognizes the importance of leaving operators flexibility to manage their own networks, this does not include intentionally blocking access to other commission-authorized networks, particularly where the purpose or effect of that interference is to drive traffic to the interfering operator’s own network,” they wrote.
Cisco Files Suit Against Rivals
Network equipment maker Cisco Systems Inc filed several lawsuits on Friday against Arista Networks Inc, alleging the smaller rival of copying its networking technologies.
The lawsuits, filed in a federal court in California, accuse Arista of infringing on 14 patents on networks and also on related copyrights, Cisco General Counsel Mark Chandler said in a blog post.
Arista was formed by former Cisco employees, including Chief Development Officer Andreas Bechtolsheim, Chief Technology Officer Kenneth Duda, and Chief Executive Officer Jayshree Ullal.
“Rather than building its products and services based on new technologies developed by Arista, however, and providing legitimate competition to Cisco, Arista took a shortcut by blatantly and extensively copying the innovative networking technologies designed and developed by Cisco,” one of the complaints said.
Cisco is a leader in the networking world, with revenue of $12.2 billion in the third quarter. Arista, in contrast, reported sales of $155.5 million for the period, although it is growing fast.
Arista said it had not yet been able to evaluate the lawsuits.
“While we have respect for Cisco as a fierce competitor and the dominant player in the market, we are disappointed that they have to resort to litigation rather than simply compete with us in products,” Arista said in an emailed statement.
Cisco filed the lawsuits on the same day the U.S. Supreme Court agreed to review a $64 million patent infringement verdict that Commil USA LLC won against the company.
Silk Road 2.0 Shutdown
U.S. governmnent authorities said they have shut down the successor website to Silk Road, an underground online drug marketplace, and charged its alleged operator with conspiracy to commit drug trafficking, computer hacking, money laundering and other crimes.
Blake Benthall, 26, was arrested last Wednesday in San Francisco and was expected to make an initial court appearance in federal court there later on Thursday.
The charges against Benthall carry a maximum sentence of life in prison.
A lawyer for Benthall could not immediately be identified.
Silk Road 2.0 was launched late last year, weeks after authorities had shuttered the original Silk Road website in October and arrested its alleged owner, Ross Ulbricht, who went by the online alias, Dread Pirate Roberts.
“Let’s be clear – this Silk Road, in whatever form, is the road to prison,” Manhattan U.S. Attorney Preet Bharara, whose office is prosecuting both cases, said in a statement.
Benthall, known as “Defcon” online, became the operator of Silk Road 2.0 in December, one month after an unnamed co-conspirator launched the site, according to prosecutors.
Silk Road 2.0 provided an online bazaar where users across the world could buy and sell drugs, computer hacking tools and other illicit items, using the digital currency Bitcoin as payment, authorities said.
As of September, the site was generating at least $8 million a month in sales, they said.
The government’s investigation included an undercover agent who was able to infiltrate the administrative staff of the website and interact directly with Benthall, prosecutors said.
Ulbricht, 30, has pleaded not guilty and is scheduled for trial in New York in January.
Judge Rejects Silicon Valley Settlement
August 18, 2014 by admin
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A California judge has rejected the proposed settlement in a lawsuit over no-hire agreements used by top Silicon Valley tech firms, saying the amount being offered to compensate workers is too low.
The remaining defendants in the case — Apple, Google, Intel and Adobe Systems — had reached a deal with the worker’s lawyers to settle the case for US$324.5 million, but Judge Lucy Koh of the federal district court in San Jose, California, said that amount is too low.
After subtracting the fees for the workers’ lawyers — they’re allowed to keep up to a quarter of the award, or $81 million, as well as other money — each worker would be left with an average of only $3,750.
“The Court finds the total settlement amount falls below the range of reasonableness,” Koh wrote in her order, issued Friday.
She said she was troubled that the workers would get less money than under a previous settlement with companies that settled earlier in the case, even though the case has been progressing in the workers’ favor since then.
Last year, Intuit, Lucasfilm and Pixar settled with the workers before the case came to trial.
All of the companies were accused of striking secret deals to not poach each others’ workers, a violation of the Sherman Antitrust Act that reduced the workers’ potential to earn higher wages.
An expert hired for the case has estimated that the workers’ should receive damages of $3 billion, for wages they could have earned if the no-hire agreements hadn’t been in place.