IBM 4,169, Google 58: Top 2008 US Patentees

There's nothing that can make you sit back, scratch your head, and wonder at the correlation between innovation and patents granted than looking at the top 300 list published by the Intellectual Property Owners Association, or IPO. This summary of how many utility patents companies received in the US last year was fascinating, both for those who racked them up and the corporations that didn't. Some at the lower end of patent activity -- Google, Yahoo, and even Apple -- raise the question of whether they are properly protecting their intellectual activity, or if they are leaving themselves open to being outflanked by competitors.

• May 18, 2009

Vulture Capitalists To Gather In Boston

Hide the women and children, and any stock you hold dear in your Internet start-up. The Venture Summit East is starting up on Tuesday, which will be graced by such luminaries of the Sand Hill Road Gang as Tim Draper of Draper Fisher Jurvetson, Alan Patricof of Greycroft Partners, Michael Skok of ...

• May 17, 2009

How Do You Define Greatness?

How do you define greatness in a company? In the short run, maybe you can judge a company on its innovation, or exceptional creation of shareholder value. Dell was once a great company, but lost its edge just around the time it started crowing that "Dude, you got a PC." Apple was a great company ...

• May 17, 2009

What's Really Going On in Oracle, Sun Deal?

Some investors have been complaining, and filing suit, over the proposed Oracle acquisition of Sun, claiming that the latter is going too cheaply. Now, as the SEC filings are appearing, Sun's position is something like the person of easy virtue, who started saying "Oh, I'd never," and then ended up with, "Oh, I think I did." And what is turning up in the filings is suggesting why investors might not be getting the money they'd like for the company.

• May 15, 2009

Fog Is Lifting On Cloud Computing

If you're tired of everyone and their mother claiming that theirs and theirs alone is the true incarnation of The Cloud, hope is at hand. The National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) has produced a working draft that defines various aspects of cloud computing, which may finally put a li...

• May 15, 2009

Sony PS3 Unit Sales Flat Lining and Trending Down

Sony's overall numbers are in with a big annual loss. That means it's time for one of our periodic looks at the PS3. And while I know the fans won't like this, the data shows that the trend line of sales is flattening, with a projection showing the start of a decline this year, even as competitors Microsoft and Nintendo have held up under the recession. That raises the question of how long Sony can keep up its gaming business.

• May 15, 2009

Federal Budget Hastens Cloud Adoption

The Obama Administration's budget blueprint for 2010, a memo released Monday, looks like a wet dream for cloud computing companies. In keeping with these "stimulating" times, the Office of Management and Budget (OMB) plans to increase spending sharply in 2010, but promises this will result in signif...

• May 14, 2009

Law Firms Allegedly Overcharging for Online Legal Research

Although we look at plenty of tech-related issues on BNET, we don't typically write about the legal industry at large. However, there's an issue brewing in the form of a class action suit that will likely cause some good-sized waves, if not a tsunami, over whether big corporate law firms are overcharging their clients for electronic legal research. Given how often high tech companies must retail law firms, I thought this might be particularly trenchant for them, though probably of interest in virtually any other industry as well.

• May 14, 2009

Is Apple Feeling the Security Pinch?

As my colleague Michael Hickins noted, among other things, Apple has long encouraged a mythological image of perfection by presenting products as self-contained black boxes that should be, as much as possible, wholly a product of Apple. But the image has been cracking of late, and the company's own actions show tacit, if not explicit, acknowledgment.

• May 14, 2009

Oracle Protecting Its Stack With Virtual Iron Deal

Oracle's acquisition of Virtual Iron, announced yesterday, raised a lot of eyebrows. Why the heck does a company that already has open source hypervisor technology of its own and is acquiring even more virtualization technology from Sun, need yet more virtualization technology in its portfolio? One ...

• May 14, 2009

Apple Needs To Change Its iTune

Apple is much beloved by its devotees and despised by most of the rest of the world, and that seems to working for now. But the times they are a' changing, as Steve Jobs can verify in his own iTunes library, and a greater number of people than ever expect to be treated like grown-ups by the vendors ...

• May 13, 2009

Intel's $1.5B Loss Is Our Gain

Intel is painting itself as being a victim of its own success, but the giant semiconductor vendor has already victimized the market more than enough. The record $1.5 billion fine -- and changes to its business practices -- imposed by the European Commission's competition committee for abusing its do...

• May 13, 2009

Record EU Fine for Intel, Deconstructing Intel Response

It seems like only yesterday that I was writing about the danger of antitrust actions in high tech. In fact, it was, and at the time I mentioned the speculation that Intel would face a walloping antitrust fine from the EU today. And so it does: €1.06 billion, or about $1.44 billion. When you read ...

• May 13, 2009

What Else Might Microsoft Be Planning?

I understand why my colleague Michael Hickins thinks that Microsoft's plans for issuing $3.75 billion in bonds would be an acquisition. But I'm going to take another side of the argument -- that Microsoft's goals are more limited and more openly stated. First, $3.75 billion, while a boat load of mo...

• May 13, 2009

What Will Microsoft Do With $3.75B?

Microsoft is raising $3.75 billion through a bond offering that should be candy to Wall Street. Moody's Investor Services rates the bonds AAA because of "the company's position as the world's largest software company with a strong and defensible market position throughout its diverse core offerings....

• May 12, 2009

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