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Wednesday 18 July 2012

Facebook and Yahoo end patent battle with advertising partnership deal

Yahoo and Facebook have ended their four-month patent battle and formed an advertising partnership.

In March, Yahoo sued Facebook for infringing 10 patents ahead of the social network's planned public listing.

The following month, Facebook counter-sued, claiming Yahoo had violated its patents covering photo tagging, advertising and online recommendations.

The former warring firms have now announced they will cross-license innovations from each other and collaborate on future projects.

Yahoo's interim chief executive Ross Levinsohn initiated moves to resolve the dispute immediately after taking over the role, reported the AllThingsD blog ahead of the official announcement.

In the resulting negotiations, Facebook's team was led by the social networking firm's chief operating officer Sheryl Sandberg.

In a statement, Ross Levinsohn said: "We are excited to develop a deeper partnership with Facebook, and I'm grateful to Sheryl and her team for working hard together with our team to develop this dynamic agreement. Combining the premium content and reach of Yahoo as the world's leading digital media company with Facebook provides branded advertisers with unmatched opportunity."

Sheryl Sandberg said: "Yahoo's new leaders are driven by a renewed focus on innovation and providing great products to users.

"Together, we can provide users with engaging social experiences while creating value for marketers."

The move may help secure Yahoo's top job for Levinsohn, according to the BBC. Rival Jason Kilar, head of the Hulu video streaming service, withdrew after news of the patent agreement leaked.

Levinsohn took over the chief executive role in May after then Yahoo CEO Scott Thompson resigned under pressure from investors, after inaccuracies were discovered in his corporate biography.

Thompson's departure came just four months after taking over as chief executive from Tim Morse, who had held the role on an interim basis after Yahoo's board removed Carol Bartz as chief executive in September 2011 after only two and a half years.

Yahoo has been in a state of nearly constant turmoil since it rejected Microsoft's $44bn takeover offer in 2008. It is looking to re-establish itself as a leader in digital advertising in the face of strong competition from newcomers Facebook and Twitter.

Levinsohn, who is now spearheading that effort, is "a seasoned media veteran with deep ties to the major entertainment companies and to advertisers, and has articulated a vision for Yahoo as a digital media company," according to Bloomberg Businessweek.

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Retail suffering from lack of mobile presence

Retailers need to address the growing trend of mobile commerce to keep up with the needs of their consumers.

This was the belief of Olivier Ropars, senior director of Europe mobile commerce at eBay, who told Computer Weekly that fewer than half of the retailers he speaks to have any form of mobile presence.

“When people visit retail websites on their smartphone, they just go to a classic website and those retailers are suffering from it,” Ropars said.

The trend of shopping on a mobile phone is being driven by consumers and now it is time for retailers to play their cards or lose out, but even with most telling Ropars they will invest in the technology in the coming year, many don’t know where to start.

“With so much you can do in the mobile space, from HTML5 and apps through to the mobile web, it is hard to figure out where to begin,” Ropars said.

“There is no easy answer but the key is to know your customers, how they use their mobiles and what they want from you.”

Ropars illustrated the point with a comparison between John Lewis and Superdry. While customers of John Lewis may want to use their mobile as an additional tool, perhaps to reserve items or check stock, those visiting Superdry are looking at new trends and when they are going to hit the market.

“Once you understand this, it is easier to plan your next move,” he said.

However, Ropars believes anyone at square one should look to mobilising their websites first and foremost.

“Mobile web has got to be the start for most,” he said.

“It is not necessarily where transactions are going to happen but it is where you can innovate and test things out for your mobile strategy.”

Mobile apps, Ropars claimed, are expensive to develop and once downloaded are out of the company’s control, only updating if the user chooses to.

By starting with a website, retailers can undergo a “feature triage” to work out what elements should be included on the mobile site and to change, innovate or upgrade as often as they like, without damaging the company’s reputation.

“If you don’t get the app right the first time you will get bad reviews and can destroy the brand,” said Ropars. “With the mobile web, if it doesn’t work you just switch it off and update it.”

“Once they have got a great experience on your mobile website, then you can see if they would like an app, what they would like on it and encourage them to download one when you have developed it.”

This approach also makes it easier to compete with other retailers as with the millions of apps available, it is hard to make yours stick out.

“Not everyone will download apps to access you,” he added. “Most people will only have one or two retail apps tops on their mobile.”

“But if you get the right experience on your mobile website, it will be easier to distribute.”

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Judge rejects secrecy bids in Apple vs. Samsung battle

An employee of South Korean mobile carrier KT holds an Apple Inc's iPhone 4 (L) smartphone and a Samsung Electronics' Galaxy S II smartphone as he poses for photographs at a registration desk at KT's headquarters in Seoul, in this August 25, 2011 file photo.

Credit: Reuters/Jo Yong-Hak

By Dan Levine

SAN FRANCISCO | Wed Jul 18, 2012 9:57am IST

SAN FRANCISCO (Reuters) - A U.S. judge rejected several requests by Apple Inc (AAPL.O) and Samsung Electronics Co Ltd (005930.KS) to keep portions of key documents out of public view in their high-stakes patent litigation battle set for trial later this month.

Apple and Samsung, the world's largest consumer electronics corporations, are waging legal war in several countries, accusing each other of patent violations as they vie for supremacy in a fast-growing market for mobile devices.

(A report says new Apple iPhone will have thinner screen. Read story here)

In an order issued late on Tuesday, U.S. District Judge Lucy Koh in San Jose, California, wrote that "it appears that the parties have overdesignated confidential documents and are seeking to seal information that is not truly sealable."

Koh gave both companies one week to refile their sealing requests. Representatives for Apple and Samsung could not immediately be reached for comment.

Filing documents under seal has become almost standard procedure in intellectual-property cases as companies try to keep their trade secrets and other sensitive business information from coming out during litigation.

Apple sued Samsung last year in the United States and a highly anticipated trial is scheduled to begin July 30. If Apple wins, it could seek to permanently bar the sale of some Samsung phones in the crucial U.S. market.

Koh has already granted pretrial injunctions against Samsung's Galaxy Tab 10.1 and its Galaxy Nexus phone. Samsung is appealing both of those orders. Samsung's phones and tablets run on the Android operating system, developed by Google (GOOG.O).

Apple and Samsung have filed legal arguments on a range of subjects in recent weeks, including briefs on how broadly some patent claims should be defined and what evidence should be kept out of the trial.

However, portions of those documents are blacked out from public view as both companies argued they contained sensitive information.

Koh's order on Tuesday came hours after Reuters filed a motion seeking to intervene in the case for the purposes of opposing Apple and Samsung's document redactions. The judge wrote that "only documents of exceptionally sensitive information that truly deserve protection will be allowed to be redacted or kept from the public."

The case in U.S. District Court, Northern District of California, is Apple Inc v. Samsung Electronics Co Ltd et al, 11-1846.

(Reporting By Dan Levine; Editing by Martha Graybow and Matt Driskill)

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Are shared private broadband connections the future of Wi-Fi on the go?

Public Wi-Fi is beginning to find its way into every corner of the UK. It is no longer the domain of the American-style coffee shop, with pubs, retailers and even theme parks offering their own connections.

However, this is not enough for the data-hungry devices in most people’s pockets, and both consumers and business users are looking for connections on the move, not just over an espresso.

Technology has now been developed to take advantage of existing residential Wi-Fi connections, enabling customers signed up for home broadband deals with their internet service provider (ISP) to use other customers' routers to connect to the internet on the move.

In the UK, BT has its Fon offering, in France there are similar deals available from three providers, and now a Swedish firm called Anyfi Networks is testing its own software to enable the process without having to sign in through a web portal each time you want to connect to a different network.

The idea makes sense. As Anyfi says on its website, why invest billions of dollars in beefing up cellular networks for mobile data when there are Wi-Fi networks with plenty of spare capacity everywhere? However, not everyone is so keen.

Firstly, there is the security aspect. We often hear horror stories of what can happen to personal data if you don’t protect your Wi-Fi connection, but by signing up to a service like this, it may feel like you are throwing open your doors to prospective cybercriminals.

However, all the firms offering these services claim security is their number one priority and they go to great measures to keep users safe.

Anyfi said its software creates a virtual access port to keep visitors away from the home connection entirely. The solution also routes the customer back to make its device think it is on its home Wi-Fi network. As a result, it puts the same security measures in place as the customer uses at home, ensuring mobiles and tablets are protected from insecure Wi-Fi.

Likewise, when a BT user shares their connection, it is over a separate channel and does not mix the external user with the home customer, according to the telco.

If security is not an issue, what about performance? Surely passing on a portion of your bandwidth to the public is going to damage your experience on the web?

Again, however, those behind the technology say no. Both BT and Anyfi said they prioritise any data requests coming from the home environment, with the former claiming it is such a small amount of bandwidth that no effect would be felt by the user paying for the service anyway.

Of course, if so little bandwidth is being siphoned off, there are questions on how reliable the portable connections will be as well. But for someone passing homes in business hours and checking their office e-mail when most are out at work, there should not be too many barriers to performance.

What will win people round from all of these issues is the ease of use. The prospect of having Wi-Fi wherever you go with – in Anyfi’s case – a seamless transition between networks, will appeal to the social network-frenzied consumer as much as the work-e-mail-obsessed professional on the go.

Björn Smedman, CEO of Anyfi Networks, told Computer Weekly that Europe was much more positive about the trade-off, so the roll-out and adoption could be much faster on our shores.

“It’s a little to do with culture,” he said. “The security of the product is perfect, but the psychology of the solution could be improved.

“Some people act instinctively, to say they do not want to use this type of solution, but we are more open to it in the EU perhaps.”

The key is in implementation. BT faced a backlash from customers when Computer Weekly discovered it was automatically opting users into Fon, with only very tiny smallprint detailing the service and a long line of URLs and website searches required to find out how to turn it off.

Other ISPs and mobile operators should learn from this lesson and be open with their customers. The conversation may begin with the positives that opening up your Wi-Fi can bring, but they must fill in all the blanks so customers are happy and aware of what they are signing up for.

If this rule is followed and the technologies continue to get easier to use, this could well be the path of all future public Wi-Fi where it is better to share.

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Google revises proposals to EC competition authorities

Google has submitted a revised set of proposals to address the concerns of Europe’s competition authorities.

The move comes after competition commissioner Joaquin Almunia asked Google to clarify some elements of the proposals submitted at the beginning of July.

In May, Almunia set a July deadline for Google to respond to four areas of concern about the company abusing its dominant position in its online search rankings.

The call for clarification suggests that Google's first set of proposals did not go far enough to address those concerns.

The European Commission will now review Google’s revised offer, and is expected to decide by the end of the month whether to settle the case or send formal charges.

Both parties are keen to reach a speedy deal and avoid a court battle, but Almunia has said Google’s offer must address all his concerns, according to the Financial Times.

Last month, the firm's executive chairman, Eric Schmidt, said Google disagreed that the firm had done anything to breach EU antitrust law, but failure to satisfy the EU competition authorities could have severe consequences.

Almunia has warned that if proposals to address the EC's concerns are unsatisfactory, formal proceedings will continue through the adoption of a statement of objections.

Once adopted, the EC could impose fines of up to 10% of Google global revenues, reported at $37.9bn in 2011.

However, if the revised proposals are accepted, the EC will begin settlement talks. Under commission guidelines, Google will be given around a month to finalise its offer, which would then be tested with the companies that have complained about its behaviour.

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