Apple's Thermonuclear Patent War Is A Farce - ReadWriteWeb

The news: The U.S. Patent and Trademark Office has declared a huge Apple multi-touch-screen patent - the so-called "Steve Jobs patent" - to be invalid. As CNET adds, this is the second Apple patent to get a smackdown. The previous one was about Apple's "rubber band" effect. Neither ruling is final, but still.

The best analysis: Groklaw, which has been doing amazing coverage of Apple's legal war, writes: "If you want to know why people now hate Apple for its legal swashbuckling, this is Exhibit A."

The conclusion: This whole notion of Steve Jobs launching his "thermonuclear war" on Android is a farce. A sham. A joke. It has been from the start.

Apple Keeps Failing

Apple's claims have been knocked down all over the world. In England a court was so appalled by Apple's claims that it ordered Apple to run ads explaining that Samsung had not, in fact, copied Apple.

Apple appealed, and lost, so the public shaming went forward. Apple brazenly snubbed its nose at the court by creating an ad that taunted Samsung even more. So the court made Apple do it again, and get it right this time.

Yes, Apple won a big case in California. But that too could unravel since the jury appears to have made numerous mistakes. Samsung wants the verdict set aside. The judge is now urging Apple and Samsung to make peace.

Apple, The Knight In Shining (Bogus) Armor

What's especially rich is the way Apple keeps trying to act like this is some noble quest, that the fights aren't about money but rather are about principles and "values," as Tim Cook wrote in a letter to Apple employees after the big win against Samsung last summer. 

Now it appears that Apple applied for and received a bunch of lame (and apparently in some cases bogus) patents, then used them to launch a cynical war that it hoped would slow the progress of Android. 

Apple is using lawyers and courtrooms to do two things:

First, Apple is using lawsuits as a form of marketing, a way to generate headlines and smear rivals as copycats, while depicting Apple -- pure, noble Apple -- as the font of knowledge from which all innovation flows.

Second, Apple figures it can outspend its rivals and beat them into submission with bogus claims, tie them up with expensive litigation and distract them.

This is not what courts are for. Nor is it what patents are for. This is despicable behavior.

The Plan Has Backfired

What's worse, it hasn't worked. Android now has 75% share in smartphones, versus 15% for Apple. Android is also chipping away in tablets, where Apple's share has dropped to 52%.

Steve Jobs's big "thermonuclear war" has backfired in every way. Apple is the one that has become distracted, while Google keeps chugging away.

Apple had hoped to come out of this looking like a hero. But now, as another of its patents gets struck down, Apple instead looks like a bully -- and a ridiculous, toothless one at that.

HTC and Apple reach global settlement - AFP

HTC and Apple reach global settlement

By Benjamin Yeh (AFP) â€" 1 hour ago 

TAIPEI â€" Taiwan's leading smartphone maker HTC said Sunday it has reached a global settlement with technology giant Apple, bringing an end to all outstanding litigation between the two companies.

The deal includes a 10-year licensing agreement over patents, HTC said in a statement, without providing further details.

"HTC is pleased to have resolved its dispute with Apple, so HTC can focus on innovation instead of litigation," HTC CEO Peter Chou said in the statement.

Apple CEO Tim Cook said: "We are glad to have reached a settlement with HTC."

"We will continue to stay laser focused on product innovation."

HTC and Apple were locked in more than 20 cases in the world including some pending the ruling of the International Trade Commission of the United States, according to an HTC official who spoke on condition of anonymity.

Technology giants have taken to routinely pounding one another with patent lawsuits. Apple has accused HTC and other smartphone makers using Google's Android mobile operating system of infringing on Apple-held patents.

"This is definitely a positive element to HTC, especially when it is being knocked by poor sales," Mars Hsu of Grand Cathay Securities told AFP.

"Unlike the lawsuits between Apple and Samsung focusing on the alleged infringement of iPhone outlook, the suits with HTC are more related to alleged technology infringements," he said.

Apple won an order last December from the US International Trade Commission, which issued a "limited exclusion order" directing that HTC stop bringing offending smartphones into the United States effective on April 19.

In May, US mobile carrier Sprint said it had to delay the introduction of an Android smartphone from HTC after the devices were blocked by US customs in the first enforcement of a win in a trade complaint by Apple.

HTC's net profit in the three months to September tumbled 79.1 percent from a year ago to Tw$3.9 billion ($133.1 million), down sharply from Tw$18.64 billion.

Revenues totalled Tw$70.2 billion, meeting the lower side of the Tw$70 billion-Tw$80 billion range it had previously forecast. The revenues marked a sharp decline of 48 percent from a year ago when they were Tw$135.82 billion.

In the latest of the series of lawsuits between the two companies, HTC in July said it was suing Apple in a district court in Florida but declined to elaborate as the case had entered formal litigation proceedings.

According to the Taipei-based Apple Daily newspaper, HTC claimed in the suit that Apple's MacBook Air, MacBook Pro and iPhone have infringed on two patents it acquired from Hewlett-Packard last year related to computer networks.

But HTC hailed a victory in July as a British court ruled that it did not infringe on Apple's photo management patent while deeming three other Apple patents -- for slide-to-unlock, multi-touch and multilingual keyboard capability -- invalid.

HTC sells its own smartphones and also makes handsets for a number of leading US companies, including Google's Nexus One.

The company has recently unveiled a new series of smartphones to compete with US technology giant Apple and South Korea's Samsung, which separately launched the iPhone 5 last month and the Galaxy Note II in late September.

Copyright © 2012 AFP. All rights reserved. More »

Oracle Links All of Its SaaS Business Apps to Social Media Platform - eWeek

The Oracle Social Media Platform, introduced at Oracle OpenWorld Oct. 2, brings social media functions to all Oracle business applications delivered in the cloud, CEO Larry Ellison says.

SAN FRANCISCOâ€"Oracle CEO Larry Ellison his company’s Social Relationship Management Platform at the Oracle OpenWorld conference with the claim that it differs from all competing enterprise social media products in that it is a platform, not just an application.

Because the social media capabilities are built as a platform, those capabilities are part of the whole range of Oracle software-as-a-service (SaaS) applications for human resources, customer relationship management (CRM), sales, marketing, finance, recruiting and more, Ellison said during his second keynote address the afternoon of Oct. 2 at Oracle OpenWorld in San Francisco.

“We implemented [social] not at the application layer but at the platform layer. That means every application you build inherits the benefits of social technology,” he said.

The elements of the Social Relationship Management Platform were detailed earlier in the day in a presentation by Thomas Kurian, executive vice president of Oracle product development, who also revealed an expanded list of SaaS-delivered apps.

New in social media apps is the Oracle Data and Insight Cloud Service, which aggregates customer-related data from enterprise, social and external sources to integrate it with business applications like CRM. The Oracle Social Sites Cloud Service lets developers create company Web sites that run on social media sites including Facebook, Twitter and Google +.

“We believe that social media can transform how you run a number of business processes because that’s where your customers are,” Kurian said.

The social media platform monitors comments about a company on social media, engages with customers about their concerns. The platform can also be used by an enterprise internally to engage with employees, he said.

Ellison said that Oracle developed its Social Relationship Management Platform based on its own research but also through a number of recent acquisitions of companies such as Collective Intellect, Involver and Vitrue.

Other major enterprise software companies, including Microsoft and SAP have made social media acquisitions of late as they look at the success of social media sites in the consumer world and apply them to the enterprise market. Salesforce.com touted its own enterprise social media offerings at its Dreamforce 2012 user conference just two weeks ago, also in San Francisco. Salesforce would likely take issue with Ellison’s claim that it was only offering a social media application rather than a full-scale platform.

The growth of enterprise social media is also benefiting other companies such as Gigya, a social media infrastructure services firm, which the social media backbone of a number of Web sites.

Gigya started in 2006 when consumer social media was in its infancy, but CEO Patrick Salyer saw its potential for the enterprise. “We thought the whole Web would become social,” said Salyer.

When a Web site invites a visitor to sign up for a service using Facebook or Twitter, it is actually Gigya behind the scenes providing the functionality to their visitors, Gigya can provide the infrastructure to do that quicker and at a lower cost than if the customer built the service themselves, Salyer said.

While Gigya isn’t as well known as Salesforce, Oracle and Microsoft in social media, the company stands to benefit as all sorts of companies seek to get into the enterprise social media market, he said.

The AppAdvice Week In Review: Apple Rights A Wrong With Google Maps Edition - AppAdvice

Here are just a few of the stories we covered during the week that was.

Google Maps returns to iOS 6

Apple gave iOS 6 users an early Christmas present this week, as they allowed Google Maps to return to the App Store. However, they weren’t exactly thrilled to do so.

The return of Google Maps ends a saga that began in June, when Cupertino announced that they would no longer be using Google’s mapping software for the default Maps app in iOS. Instead, they created their own, which was heavily panned soon after it was officially released in September.

Initially, it was reported that Google Maps’ reentry into iOS 6 was minimal, at best.

As Aldrin Calimlim reported:

Given the criticism that had befallen Apple’s Maps app, it’s widely presumed that many users had been holding out on updating to iOS 6, on which the app debuted. Supposedly, these users were not so keen on using Apple’s mapping system instead of Google Maps, which it replaced rather unceremoniously.

But following the much-awaited return of Google Maps on iOS last Wednesday, Chitika found that only a small percentage of users within its mobile ad network updated to iOS 6.

Meanwhile, Dom Esposito explained how, when using a jailbreak, users could make Google Maps their default application.

MapsOpener will allow you to set Google Maps as the default maps app on your jailbroken iOS device. Whenever you click on an address or maps link in Safari, Google Maps will launch and load up the information you’ve requested. Along with that, tapping on any “Directions” links in Safari will launch turn-by-turn navigation within Google Maps instead of the list-style directions found in the iOS 5 Maps app.

So what’s the fuss? Robin Rhys explains:

Recommended Reading

Finally

We can’t get enough of the Bobbleshop, especially with the arrival of Pixelheads. If you’re looking for two fun apps to gift this season, you can’t go wrong by selecting the original Bobbleshop â€" Bobble Head Avatar Maker and Pixelheads- Pixel Portrait Avatar Maker.

Take a look:

Apple's iPhone 5 officially goes on sale in China - CNET

Apple's iPhone 5 went on sale in China today.

(Credit: Apple)

The world's biggest mobile phone market can now get its hands on Apple's iPhone 5.

The device officially went on sale in China today, according to The Next Web. Customers were able to snap up the smartphone through the Apple Online Store, via select Apple resellers, and by reservation from Apple retail stores.

China is of huge significance for Apple, it is the company's second biggest market -- after the U.S. -- and already accounted for about 15 percent ($23.8 billion) of the company's revenue for its fiscal year that ended in September.

Apple announced last month that it would be bringing the iPhone 5 to China, along with Wi-Fi versions of its iPad Mini and fourth-generation iPad. Both iPads went on sale there last week.

After kicking off preorders for the new phone last week, carrier China Unicom said it took in more than 100,000 online reservations in less than 48 hours. According to The Next Web, China Unicom announced more than 300,000 reservations earlier this week.

Related stories

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• iPhone infringes on patents from MobileMedia, jury rules
• Apple offers free two- to three-day shipping on all products
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In the face of vibrant competition, Apple recently slipped out of the top five smartphone vendors in China. Researcher Canalys said in November that in the third quarter, the iPhone's share of shipments into the Chinese smartphone market dropped slightly to 8 percent. Market leader Samsung had 14 percent, and Chinese manufacturers accounted for the other four spots in the top five. But that could change now that the company's newest smartphone is available.

After overcoming a number of regulatory hurdles, the device is available through carriers China Telecom and China Unicom. As of now, it's still not being offered on China Mobile -- the country's largest carrier. Apple has been talking to China Mobile for several years about carrying the iPhone. However, the two have been unable to reach an agreement.

Besides China, Apple recently announced that more than 50 other countries will also get the iPhone 5, including South Korea, Brazil, Egypt, and Vietnam.

Apple vs Motorola - ITU aims for clarification after 'heated debate' - ZDNet

Mobile phone firms including Apple and Motorola met with regulators and others on Wednesday in an attempt to resolve the issues around standards-essential patent licensing, but failed to come to any fresh conclusions for now.

Many patents are essential to certain standards, such as 3G, and they tend to come with so-called fair, reasonable and non-discriminatory (FRAND) terms attached â€" effectively meaning that anyone can license them at a reasonable price. In the mobile patent wars over the last couple of years, FRAND-encumbered patents have sometimes been used as legal weapons, notably by Motorola.

In a meeting held on Wednesday under the auspices of the International Telecommunications Union (ITU), a UN agency, companies, regulators and academics took part in a patent roundtable in Geneva. No resolution came out of the meeting, but the convenors remained upbeat about future developments.

"Today's event has gone a long way to help clarify the positions of various stakeholders in determining the effectiveness of FRAND commitments and the impact of litigations surround standards-essential patents," ITU Telecommunication Standardization Bureau chief Malcolm Johnson said after what he referred to as a "heated debate".

The issues

There are two key issues that remain unresolved: what 'reasonable' means; and whether it should be permissible for a company to use a FRAND-protected patent as a weapon for getting a ban on a rival's product.

"Today's event has gone a long way to help clarify the positions of various stakeholders in determining the effectiveness of FRAND commitments" â€" Malcolm Johnson, ITU

Google's Motorola subsidiary has tried to use standards-essential patents against Microsoft and Apple in injunction bids, and has argued that a reasonable rate for licensing those patents would be 2.25 percent of the sales price of the full product. Microsoft, Apple and Cisco have banded together in disagreement.

"The average selling price [ASP] approach wrongly permits the patent holder to collect value unassociated with its contribution to the standard," Apple chief intellectual property counsel BJ Watrous argued in a morning session. "Using the ASP of the end user product as the royalty base [is] discriminating against companies like Apple who sell high-value products."

During the same session â€" the morning talks were open, while those during the afternoon were held under the Chatham House Rule â€" Motorola senior licensing counsel Ray Warren said Apple was misunderstanding the way FRAND works in the telecoms industry, as it is relatively new to that game.

"For 20 years the [FRAND] licensing commitments made by innovators in the communications industry have been sufficient," Warren said. "Past experience would indicate that [FRAND] has been effective… but that doesn't mean there isn't room for improvement to improve the present situation."

Keep trying

The industry-wide talks will now continue, starting with another, more low-level, meeting on Thursday.

"Any attempt at providing market players with clear, transparent, effective and up-to-date patent policies and guidelines… would work to the benefit of the industry as a whole," Johnson said.

"The ITU will not interfere with bilateral negotiations. However, taking into account the concerns voiced by some participants today regarding the effectiveness of current FRAND commitments and impact on standards-essential patents… I believe clarification in this regard could be a significant contribution from the ITU in addressing the current difficulties."

The various participants' contributions to the debate can be read here.

Flipboard Proves — Again — That Android Tablet Apps Don't Have to Suck - Wired

Flipboard’s new tablet-optimized Android app proves, yet again, that Android tablet apps don’t have to be lousy. Photo: Ariel Zambelich/Wired

Flipboard’s tablet-optimized version of its Android app is everything you expect if you’ve ever used Flipboard on another gadget, which is to say it’s awesome. And it’s exactly what other big-time app makers should be doing, but too many aren’t.

The elegant app puts Twitter, Facebook, Rdio, Spotify, Instagram, Dropbox, eBay, Yelp, Foursquare and everyone else on notice: Your Android tablet apps don’t have to suck, and if they do, it’s because you’re lazy. It isn’t that these companies can’t make apps that look as great as they work, it’s just that they chose not to.

Flipboard’s app looks and works fantastically on both 7-inch and 10-inch slates. The stiff board turns seen in Flipboard’s other apps are just as responsive on the Nexus 7 and Nexus 10 tablets we tested the app on. My Twitter, Google+, YouTube, Flickr, SoundCloud, Tumblr and Facebook feeds appeared without a hitch. So did articles and videos pulled from dozens of sources around the web. Everything was laid out in Flipboard’s lovely magazine-like user interface â€" exactly as expected.

The app responds to the various screen sizes found in Android tablets, taking full advantage of the platform’s widescreen displays and perfectly scaling as needed. Flipboard said it spent more than a year working with Samsung to ensure its app works seamlessly on the Galaxy Tab and Galaxy Note tablets, but you can also run it on any other Android tablet, including Amazon’s Kindle Fire and Barnes & Noble’s Nook.

Flipboard isn’t alone in making a slick Android tablet app. Netflix, Hulu, Plume, Mint, Instapaper and Tiny Co. offer tablet-optimized apps that rock. Google has released plenty of design tools for tablet-optimized Android apps and practically begged developers to get on board. And of course Google builds fantastic tablet apps, providing many examples for others to follow.

But Flipboard remains remarkable. The app that Steve Jobs loved on his iPad has lost nothing in its translation to Android tablets and makes full use of their different form factors. This is significant, because it proves once again that good Android tablet apps are possible and gives users the great experience they deserve.