Hasta La Gadget!

Lawsuits happen all the time, especially where giant names and tons of money are involved. But this lawsuit is rather unusual: Facebook has been sued because it is accused of infringing on the patents of a Dutch programmer Joannes Jozef Everardus van Der Meer with its “Like” button.  Joannes Jozef has been dead for more than 8 years and the company that owns his intellectual property is behind the lawsuit.

So why the sudden lawsuit? BBC reports that Rembrandt Social Media holds the patents on behalf of Joannes Jozef and has contested that the Facebook “Like” button bears a remarkable resemblance to what’s described in patents of Joannes Jozef, which is “an important foundation of social media as we know it”, says Rembrandt Social Media. The lawsuit has been filed in a federal court in Virginia. Joannes Jozef’s widow and his colleagues are expected to testify in the court.

Rembrandt Social Media claims that Joannes Jozef created a social diary service he called Surfboard and was awarded the patents in 1998. A critical factor in the lawsuit is Rembrandt Social Media’s claim about Facebook knowing the patents to be of Joannes Jozef as they made reference to them in Facebook’s own patent application. Facebook has not made any comments about the lawsuit, and it is unclear at this point as to what will be the outcome of the trial. What needs to be seen is what the jury will decide.

By Ubergizmo. Related articles: Hacker Coerced And Blackmailed Women Into Taking Nude Photos Via Webcam, Eric Schmidt To Visit North Korea,

It’s time for another unveil of the speaker lineup we’ve got brewing for Expand in San Francisco this March 16-17. We’ve got four more inspiring thinkers and doers who will be joining us on stage at Fort Mason Center:

• Marc Raibert: President & Chief Robot Lover, Boston Dynamics
• Catherine Mohr: Sr. Director of Research, Intuitive Surgical
• MG Siegler: General Partner, CrunchFund
• Russ Angold: Co-Founder and CTO, Ekso Bionics[TM]

They’re joining a whole host of other rad speakers including Chris Anderson (CEO, 3D Robotics and former editor-in-chief, Wired), Yancey Strickler (Co-founder and Head of Community, Kickstarter), Steve Cousins (CEO, Willow Garage), Julie Uhrman (Founder and CEO, OUYA) and many more. Stay tuned here and on our social channels (Twitter, Facebook and Google+) for more agenda reveals and other Expand news.

Plus, find out who the attendees are most looking forward to seeing…

Filed under: Announcements, Meta

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David Eun, presently serving as EVP at Samsung’s Open Innovation Center after stints at AOL, Google, Time Warner and NBC Entertainment, just took the stage here in Dana Point, California during the opening night of D:Dive Into Media 2013. While the interview was certainly a wide-ranging one, one particular diversion caught our ear. Breaking from discussions on Eun’s view of Samsung as a content company, Swisher asked Eun quite pointedly about its relationship with Apple. Eun chuckled a bit, making quite clear that he himself was not the whole of Samsung. While Eun wouldn’t comment on the specifics of the ongoing litigation, he did note that as a evangelist of Silicon Valley and a consumer of technology, he views the deadlock as “a loss.”

It was actually a pretty candid response, and it was clear from his body language that he truly is less than thrilled that the legal struggles are ongoing. As Eun noted, Samsung makes money each time an iPhone is sold, yet the two companies are indeed competitors on some levels. Eun confessed that he’d simply have to let the lawyers battle it out, but it was quite refreshing to hear a Samsung executive admit what most laypeople have long since believed: that the patent quibbles are hindering innovation on the whole.

We’ll be reporting live from D:Dive Into Media as it continues on February 11-12. You can follow our coverage by using the “dmedia2013” tag.

Filed under: Cellphones, Apple, Samsung

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WASHINGTON — More than a dozen House Republicans sent a letter to their party leaders on Monday night urging them to “immediately” reauthorize the Violence Against Women Act with a bipartisan bill — something the House failed to do in the last Congress.

“Now is the time to seek bipartisan compromise on the reauthorization of these programs,” reads the letter to House Speaker John Boehner (R-Ohio) and House Majority Leader Eric Cantor (R-Va.), signed by 17 House Republicans. “VAWA programs save lives, and we must allow states and communities the opportunity to build upon the success of current VAWA programs so that we can help even more people.”

The letter doesn’t get into specifics and makes no mention of the lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender (LGBT) or Native American protections added into the Senate VAWA bill that drew House Republican opposition in last year’s fight. But its tone suggests that at least this group of GOP lawmakers is open to considering the new provisions. The letter also gives a sense of real-world effects of Congress failing to reauthorize VAWA last year for the first time since the law’s inception in 1994.

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Evergreen offers you their newest iPad 4/iPad mini multi-card reader, the DN-84351. Designed specifically for your iPad 4/iPad mini, this multi-card reader comes with two card slots including SD and microSD, a USB port and a Lightning connector. The DN-84351 retails for 1,499 Yen (about $16). [Product Page]