Business

From Florian Mueller’s patent blog:

Three months ago I saw a filing by Nokia that related to some discussions with Samsung considered so secretive that it wanted even the very title of a document to be sealed. It was clear that Nokia and Samsung were talking about something that also related somehow to the 2011 Nokia-Apple settlement, about the terms of which nothing was known except that Apple described it, at a very high level, as “merely a ‘provisional license’ for a limited ‘standstill’ period”. One could figure that Nokia and Samsung wouldn’t talk about some other patent agreement without talking about some sort of patent deal between them — a license or an outright purchase.

On Wednesday evening local time, Magistrate Judge Paul S. Grewal of the United States District Court for the Northern District of California, whose writing style is well-liked by various patent litigation watchers including me, entered an order that finally sheds light on this. The order came down after a hearing held yesterday on a request by Apple (and possibly also one by Nokia) for sanctions against Samsung (and/or its outside counsel) for violation of a protective order, i.e., for illegal disclosure of (in this case, extremely) confidential business information.

I must say that I’m shocked.

The big question here is this:

So how did Samsung’s executives get access to contracts that were meant to be used only by its outside counsel (marked as “Highly Confidential — Attorneys’ Eyes Only”) for the purposes of litigation with Apple and absolutely positively not for the pupose of gaining unfair advantages in licensing negotiations with anyone (not with Apple, and much less with third parties like Nokia), when such disclosure would constitute an unbelievably serious violation of court rules?

It will be interesting to see how this plays out. These are pretty serious accusations.

There’s a reported fix that works for some, though not 100%:

AppleInsider reported on Monday that a simple procedure has successfully eliminated the bug for many users: Disable iMessage in Settings -> Messages, Reset the iPhone’s Network Settings under Settings -> General -> Reset Reenable iMessage.

While the method worked, and continues to work, for most iPhone owners afflicted with the iMessage bug, some have reported that the message failures reappeared after a few hours, forcing them to repeat the steps above.

There’s conjecture that the upcoming 7.03 update will contain this fix. Let’s hope so.

Back in May, 2011, a number of small Apple developers using Apple’s in-app payment system received a legal complaint from Lodsys, threatening a lawsuit if the developer didn’t agree to license a specific Lodsys patent.

Within months, that brought a legal challenge by Apple, which saw a clear threat to its ecosystem. Apple had already paid to license Lodsys patents when they were in the hands of an earlier owner—Intellectual Ventures. So Apple went to court, arguing that Lodsys can’t demand additional payments by threatening iOS developers.

Now, after two years of litigation, it’s back to square one. The East Texas judge overseeing Lodsys’ systematic patent attack on app developers has refused to even consider Apple’s motion. Instead, he allowed the patent-holding company to settle all its cases—and then dismissed Apple’s motion as moot. By doing so, US District Judge Rodney Gilstrap—who has inherited the patent-happy East Texas court that once belonged to patent-troll favorite T. John Ward—has enabled Lodsys to threaten developers for months, and perhaps even years, to come.

This is infuriating.

The problem seems to be that all of the iOS developers mentioned in Apple’s complaint have, quite understandably, settled with Lodsys.

Judge Gilstrap ruled that Apple’s motion only applied to the seven defendants in the case. If they were out, the case was done. He ignored the Apple and developer arguments about the widespread nature of Lodsys’ campaign, declining to see any broader issue.

While Apple’s legal challenges continue, Lodsys continues to sue developers. In the meantime, Lodsys is getting countersued by companies they have pursued, such as Martha Stewart Living Omnimedia.

Lodsys had demanded Stewart pay $20,000—$5,000 for each of its iPad apps. Instead, Stewart sued Lodsys in Wisconsin, where Lodsys CEO Mark Small lives. (Lodsys’ official office, like so many patent-holding companies, is just an office suite in Marshall, Texas.)

Despicible situation.

InterBrand does this study every year.

Apple Inc.’s brand value jumped 28 percent to $98.3 billion, Google Inc. (GOOG) is now in second place at $93.3 billion, and Coca-Cola Co. has slipped from the top seat after 13 years to third place at $79.2 billion.

The annual study, closely watched by the industry, determines a brand’s value by examining its financial performance, role in influencing consumer buying and ability to secure earnings. The Top 10 is rounded out in descending order by IBM, Microsoft, GE, McDonald’s, Samsung, Intel and Toyota.

Pretty interesting.

This is very smart.

In a bid to make the ballpark experience more engaging for fans, Major League Baseball plans to roll out Apple’s new iBeacons technology to deliver targeted information and offers based on a fan’s location within the park, according to a new report.

Plan on seeing this in place at the beginning of next season. Brilliant!

This is an interesting take on the Phone sales data.

If this single product were its own company in the Standard & Poor’s 500-stock index, IPhone Inc. would outsell 474 of those companies—ranking between Wells Fargo (WFC) ($90.5 billion) and Marathon Petroleum (MPC) ($84.9 billion). The iPhone’s $88.4 billion in annualized revenue tops 21 of the 30 component companies in the Dow Jones industrial average—it would be the ninth-biggest stock in the Dow 30.

I’ve been an Apple fan since the Apple II days, have watched the company go through the wringer, teeter on the edge, bear a lot of trash talk. To watch this success unfold is incredibly gratifying to me. And, I’m sure, to the rest of the community.

I think this long time underdog status is part of the reason Apple fans are so enthusiastic about new product rollouts. Samsung can easily see the quality of the product, but I think they can’t see the beating heart underneath it all.

This is the complete text of Businessweek’s interview with Jonathan Ive and Craig Federighi, parts of which appeared last week. Every bit as revealing as the Cook interview. I get a real sense of the excitement these two have working with each other. Clearly, they love what they are doing. This from Ive:

I have always found—and I know the ID team has always found—that the discoveries you make when you are lucky enough to sit next to somebody who represents a completely different expertise, those discoveries can be really profound, and they’re really exciting.

Federighi on process:

We would prototype. We would review how it felt. Did it really work in the way we hoped it did once it was in our hands? We would get versions of it that we would live on, and then we would get together and we’d say, “I’m using it and I like this, but this bit is not coming together quite the way we wished,” and we’d iterate. So a lot of those conversations are just driven by perfecting the product together.

Ive on the emergence of parallax:

One of the things that we were interested in doing is, despite people talked about this being “flat,” is that it’s very, very deep. It’s constructed and architected visually and from an informational point of view as a very deep UI, but we didn’t want to rely on shadows or how big your highlights could get. Where do you go? I mean, there is only so long you can make your shadows.

It wasn’t an aesthetic idea to try to create layers. It was a way of trying to sort of deal with different levels of information that existed and to try to give you a sense of where you were.

There’s so much great stuff here. Interesting to hear their back and forth on complexity and collaboration, on working for Tim Cook, and the changes Tim Cook brought to Apple’s supply chain. Brilliant read.

Thoughtful responses, nice long interview.

I love that Tim Cook did this. What a great surprise for folks queueing up to buy the iPhone 5s. Phil Schiller and Eddie Cue also made the rounds of the Palo Alto area stores. Fantastic.