Tech Legal Week: Apple Patent Warnings, Midway Files, Sirius and Charter May, More

Google reportedly backs off multi-touch at Apple request, but Palm has no such plans; an antitrust expert calls EU concern over Microsoft IE "dumb"'; Midway files for Chapter 11; Charter Communications plans bankruptcy filing by April 1; Sirius XM could file for bankruptcy by tomorrow; CA settles suit against Rocket Software; and electronic evidence company Guidance Software looks bad when it can't find its own electronic evidence.

• Feb 16, 2009

China Races to Front of Global Patent Activity

I'm on a private patent email list run by Foley & Lardner partner and George Washington University Law School Professor Harold Wegner. He was recently digging through patent application statistics from various countries and found that China has pulled far ahead of the rest of the world in patent applications filed.

• Feb 12, 2009

Patent Crowdbusting: Q&A with Cheryl Milone of Article One Partners

In 1998, patent attorney Cheryl Milone had an idea: create a business that would make money by debunking patents using the wisdom of crowds. Unfortunately for her, Jeff Bezos and Tim O'Reilly got there first with BountyQuest. Milone went to work for that company for a year, though it eventually closed down. (Perhaps trying to invalidate Amazon's one-click patent didn't engender good will from Bezos.) A few years and additional boutique patent law firm experience later, Milone thought the idea was still sound and possibly facing a more receptive environment. Raising money from private investors, she started Article One Partners, using a crowdsourcing and profit-sharing model to get people to search for prior art and a multi-leg approach to making the money to pay expenses and, ultimately, to share. I spoke with her about Article One and its first announced award of $50,000 for prior art.

• Feb 11, 2009

SAP May Have Business Suite 7, But It's Still MIA With SaaS

SAP last week rolled the drums for its introduction of "Business Suite 7," the first major upgrade of its flagship corporate-operations support software in almost three years. But the company has failed to come up with a convincing plan for surviving a determined push by more modern and flexible riv...

• Feb 11, 2009

Intel Takes Spotlight, AMD Slinks Into the Shadows

It seems only fitting that on the same day Intel announced it will spend $7 billion over the next two years to modernize and expand its manufacturing capacity, rival chip maker AMD had to admit that shareholders failed to approve the financing of construction of a new plant of its own. Intel's ...

• Feb 11, 2009

Cisco Could Be on the Prowl

Cisco sees the same economy we see, but with a twist: it sees an opportunity to literally cash in on the financial crisis and make acquisitions that could make some of its partners, especially Microsoft, pretty uncomfortable. Given its stated ambitions in the data center and unified-communication...

• Feb 11, 2009

Tech Innovation in Tough Times: Q&A with Scott Anthony

When the economy is bad, companies often pull in spending everywhere, including R&D. But cutting back on the innovation seems like a potentially dangerous move. So I spoke with Scott Anthony, president of consulting firm Innosight, lead author of The Innovator's Guide to Growth, and author of the upcoming title, The Silver Lining: An Innovation Playbook for Uncertain Times.

• Feb 10, 2009

Jobs Inventor In More Than One Out of Ten Apple Patents Since 2000

Last week I wrote about potentially missing prior art in Apple's multi-touch patent. The entire exercise got me wondering more about the company's patents and invention process. Interestingly, the facts suggest that potentially losing Steve Jobs may be more of a fundamental problem than would be the case for other CEOs, because he's listed as an inventor on literally more than one out of ten patents Apple has received since 2000.

• Feb 9, 2009

Tech Legal Week: French Slap Apple, Google, Rambus Losing to Micron, More

French court slaps Google and Apple in separate cases; Apple and AT&T face yet more suits over iPhone 3G connections; and Rambus may keep loosing in court over destruction of evidence.

• Feb 9, 2009

Can Apple's Multi-Touch Patent Withstand Scrutiny -- or Challenge?

When the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office issued patent number 7,479,949 to "Jobs, et. al." for a "touch screen device, method, and graphical user interface for determining commands by applying heuristics," eyebrows shot up throughout the industry. At first glance, it seemed that Apple had locked down the concept of a multi-touch interface, posing problems for Palm and anyone else who might want to compete with the iPhone, iTouch, and future products. But some more careful consideration suggests that the patent may not be as broad as it seems -- and Apple may have missed including some seminal prior art, at least some of which was known to the inventors. That could cause spell problems in trying to enforce the patent.

• Feb 6, 2009

Sun Sets on MySQL Co-Founder Monty Widenius

Back in October we had the report that MySQL co-founder David Axmark was leaving Sun Microsystems because, according to his resignation letter, "I HATE all the rules that I need to follow, and I also HATE breaking them." At the time there were rumors that the other MySQL co-founder, Monty Widenius, was considering leaving. Now it's official.

• Feb 5, 2009

Memory Industry Shakeup: Q&A with Jim Handy

As of late there has been considerable turmoil in the memory semiconductor industry. Spansion, the leading NOR memory manufacturer, saw its CEO resign in the wake of trying to restructure its balance sheet and sell itself to another maker of flash memory. SanDisk took a big financial hit last quarter. DRAM vendor Qimonda, over three-quarters of whose shares are owned by Infineon, is shutting its U.S. plant. It's a rough time in the industry. For some clarity I spoke with memory expert Jim Handy of Objective Analysis.

• Feb 4, 2009

Layoffs Raise Many Problems for Tech Companies

A typical knee-jerk reaction of companies to bad financial conditions is to lay off workers. From one view, you can understand the managerial logic. When revenues drop enough, you lower expenses or lose money. But it turns out that companies are opening a veritable Pandora's box of issues and problems when they show enough people the door, and the total cost might well exceed the savings.

• Feb 3, 2009

Tech Legal Week: Apple Multi-Touch Patent, Microsoft Trade Secrets, More

Apple gets a big multi-touch patent; Microsoft accueses an ex-employee of trade secret theft; EU refuses to give Intel any more time on antitrust action; IBM and Apple settle over Mark Papermaster joining the latter; yet another class action targets iPhone performance; and China says it really does plan to get more serious over copyright and trademark protections.

• Feb 2, 2009

Tech Could Be Worse -- and Has Been

In the wake of layoffs, people wring their hands and think that the sky is falling. Sometimes historical perspective can be useful, and as a report from outsourcing firm Challenger, Gray & Christmas notes, as bad as it seems now, it's been far worse.

• Jan 30, 2009

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