Hasta La Gadget!

Whoa! In the world of big-time lawsuits, this must be just about the biggest. The Wall Street Journal is reporting that Apple has sued Samsung Electronics for copying “the look and feel” of its iPad tablet and iPhone smartphone. This relates to the Samsung Galaxy S 4G, which bears more than a passing resemblance to the iPhone 3G / 3GS models, and the slightly less obvious Epic 4G, Nexus S, and Galaxy Tab (presumably the older 7-inch model, since the newer ones aren’t out yet) devices. The claim for intellectual property infringement is phrased as follows:

“Rather than innovate and develop its own technology and a unique Samsung style for its smart phone products and computer tablets, Samsung chose to copy Apple’s technology, user interface and innovative style in these infringing products.”

The lawsuit was filed in the Northern District of California on Friday and seeks injunctions against Samsung, damages (both actual and punitive), and a finding that the infringement was willful. Lest we forget, the rarest outcome in such legal tussles is for an actual judgment to actually be handed down, so the greatest likelihood is that this will just lead to another round of grudging handshakes and licensing going one way with money going the other way, but still, it’s fun to see the big dogs barking at each other.

Another aspect to these proceedings that shouldn’t be overlooked is that, on the software front, they boil down to iOS versus Android (again). When Apple calls Samsung uninventive in its user interface, it’s talking more about Android’s perceived imitation of the iPhone’s interface than whatever TouchWiz tweaks Samsung has slapped on top. And hey, if you’re going to sue Google indirectly, you can’t leave a major player like Samsung outside the courtroom, it just wouldn’t be fair.

Apple sues Samsung for ‘copying’ the iPhone and iPad originally appeared on Engadget on Mon, 18 Apr 2011 16:04:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Some iPhone apps ask you for permission to track your geographical location. However, some apps pull such data without your approval. Photo: Jon Snyder/Wired.com

If people want to know everything about you, they need look no further than your smartphone. It contains a host of your personal information and leaves a trail of digital footprints everywhere you go.

A proposed class-action lawsuit filed last week alleges that Apple and a handful of app makers are invading user privacy by accessing personal data from customers’ smartphones without permission and sharing it with third-party advertisers.

Concurrently, federal prosecutors in New Jersey are investigating whether several smartphone app makers, including Pandora, are transmitting customer information without proper disclosure. Separately, Congress is mulling legislation aimed at giving consumers the option to tell companies not to track their personal data.

“I’m glad this is coming to light, because I think consumers are waking up to the tracking that’s going on with a computer, but I think there’s an extreme lack of knowledge about the tracking on your iPhone or your iPad,” said Sharon Nissim, consumer privacy counsel of the Electronic Privacy Information Center, which is not involved in the lawsuit.

Plaintiffs Natasha Acosta and Dolma Acevedo-Crespo on April 7 filed a civil complaint against Apple and eight companies providing iPhone or iPad apps, accusing them of violating the Computer Fraud and Abuse Act by intentionally accessing customer information without their authorization. The complaint seeks class-action status on behalf of every iPhone or iPad user who has installed one of the defendant’s apps over the last four years.

Well-known apps named in the lawsuit, which was filed in the district of Puerto Rico, include music-streaming service Pandora, and Dictionary.com.

The complaint accuses both Dictionary.com and Pandora [.pdf] of sharing an iPhone user’s unique device identifier, age, gender and location with third parties, including advertisers. Neither Pandora nor Dictionary.com are services that rely on location, the complaint notes.

The lawsuit cites as evidence an ongoing independent investigation by The Wall Street Journal, which tested 101 apps and found that 56 transmitted the phone’s UDID to third parties without user awareness or consent.

An iPhone does not transmit a customer’s real name, but Apple and third-party apps can identify a device with a string of unique numbers, known as the unique device identifier (UDID).

The problem is, with a UDID and other personal information such as location, age and gender data, a company could easily piece together the real identity of a smartphone user and sell that information to marketers, explained John Nevares, a lawyer representing the class-action complaint.

“When you put those together they’re able to transfer to a third party all your personal information so they can contact you later on and try to sell you something,” Nevares said. He added that this type of activity constitutes fraud and deceptive practices.

EPIC’s Nissim echoed Nevares’ concerns.

“There hasn’t been a lot of recognition that that type of identified number should be treated as personally identifiable information,” Nissim said. “If it’s combined with other information it could be used to identify you, and it becomes a gold mine of data for advertisers.”

Also as a result of The Wall Street Journal’s investigation, a federal grand jury has issued subpoenas to multiple iPhone and Android app makers, including Pandora and Anthony Campiti, creator of the Pumpkin Maker iPhone app. Pumpkin Maker, which is also named in the New Zealand class-action complaint, is an app that allows customers to carve virtual jack-o’-lanterns. The WSJ found that this app shares UDID and location data with advertisers.

The federal investigation is significant, because it could result in criminal charges against companies accused of committing fraud, the WSJ notes. However, it’s rare that companies get charged with criminal offenses, so the investigation may evolve into a civil issue, meaning companies could be forced to pay monetary damages and promise to cease these practices.

“They’re just doing information-gathering to get a better understanding” of the industry, Campiti told WSJ. “We’re not doing anything wrong and neither is anyone else doing anything wrong.”

Apple declined to comment on this story.

However, an Apple spokeswoman referred Wired.com to Apple’s privacy policy, which states, “We may collect information such as occupation, language, zip code, area code, unique device identifier, location, and the time zone where an Apple product is used so that we can better understand customer behavior and improve our products, services, and advertising.”

Issues of mobile privacy are not unique to the United States. In Germany, politician and privacy advocate Malte Spitz sued his carrier, Deutsche Telekom, to get all the information it had on him.

The telecom giant handed over to Spitz a gigantic file revealing it had tracked him 35,000 times between August 2009 and February 2010 — enough data points for German newspaper Die Zeit to compile an interactive map and video tracking his every move for six months.

In response to the Spitz incident, two U.S. Congressmen are urging American phone companies AT&T, Verizon, Sprint and T-Mobile to disclose their data collection practices.

See Also:

• Google Privacy Practices Worse Than ISP Snooping, AT&T Charges
• Learn About Privacy Issues in Networked: Carabella on the Run
• How to Handle Facebook Privacy Settings for Your Kids

Google and Nortel have agreed on the princely sum of $900 million to start off a “stalking horse” auction — wherein outside parties are still free to outdo Google’s bid — for the acquisition of Nortel’s rather vast patent portfolio. The sale comes as part of the latter company’s bankruptcy selloff and involves some 6,000 patents and patent applications, which encompass both wired and wireless communications, semiconductors, data networking, voice, and the internet — going so far as to even touch on web search and social networking. The thing is, Google’s not really enamored with these tidbits of intellectual property to the tune of nearly a billion dollars. No sir, a rather bitter blog post from the company this morning makes it quite clear that Google’s acting in order to bolster its own intellectual property library and to “create a disincentive for others to sue.” Both Android and Chrome get obliquely mentioned in Google’s announcement as benefiting from the move, which should be completed by June of this year pending other bids and regulatory approvals.

Update: Microsoft has noted that it has “a worldwide, perpetual, royalty-free license to all of Nortel’s patents that covers all Microsoft products and services, resulting from the patent cross-license signed with Nortel in 2006.” That license will also transfer with the sale of the patent rights. All that means is that Microsoft cannot be sued for infringing on that bundle of rights as it is already licensed to use them. That means Microsoft is extremely unlikely to participate in this auction — other than, of course, as a means to prevent others from obtaining the same rights.

Continue reading Google bids $900 million for Nortel patent portfolio, will use it as shield against patent trolls (update)

Google bids $900 million for Nortel patent portfolio, will use it as shield against patent trolls (update) originally appeared on Engadget on Mon, 04 Apr 2011 12:50:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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We’d say this was getting silly but that would imply that it wasn’t already. Microsoft and Apple are still at each other’s throat over the latter’s trademark application for the term “App Store,” with Microsoft now bringing in a Dr. Ronald Butters, Professor Emeritus at Duke University and a man with a taste for hardcore semantics. He says the compound noun “app store” is perfectly generic in that it “does not merely describe the thing named, it is the thing named.” In a wildly geeky turn, he references the potential for someone discovering a use for masers and trying to trademark the term “maser store” in response, which would seem immediately and logically absurd. An app store, says the good doctor, is no more capable of being trademarked than a grocery store or a stationery store or a computer store.

Of course, as with most trademark disputes, what’s truly at stake here isn’t linguistics, but a big fat wad of consumer goodwill. Having previously been quite uncomfortable with the idea of buying additional software for his mobile phone, Joe Consumer has nowadays grown quite accustomed to dropping little chunks of change on smartphone apps, and the terminology that sets his mind at ease most readily is indeed “app store.” Preventing others from using that well established moniker would clearly be a significant competitive advantage for Apple and it’s pretty hard to argue with its contention that it’s responsible for generating the goodwill that sits behind it. Then again, we reckon Android’s Market, webOS’ admittedly small App Catalog, and other moves by the likes of RIM, Nokia and Microsoft itself with WP7, haven’t done the app store cause any harm either, so in purely ethical terms it still seems a little rich for Apple to be claiming the app store crown all to itself. As to the legal battle itself, it’s descending into quite amusing minutiae, but its outcome will be of great interest to most of the aforementioned mobile ecosystem purveyors.

Microsoft keeps gunning after Apple’s ‘generic’ App Store trademark, brings in a linguistics expert originally appeared on Engadget on Wed, 30 Mar 2011 07:58:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Microsoft’s pirated software police have been going after companies abroad for years, but getting those far-away folks into US courtrooms isn’t easy. What is easy, however, is suing the folks in your own back yard — which is why Microsoft is lobbying to get laws passed in several states that’ll put US businesses on the hook for the pirating ways of their foreign suppliers. For example, if a manufacturer uses pirated software in the “manufacture, distribution, marketing, or sales” of products sold in Washington, Microsoft could sue the vendor of those products and get an injunction to stop the goods from being sold. So Washington widget retailers would be liable for the piracy of their foreign widget manufacturers, even if the illicit act was merely creating the sales invoice on a counterfeit copy of Word.

The Washington state Senate and House have already approved different versions of the bill, and the legislature is in the process of merging the two together for final approval. Louisiana passed a similar law last year, and analogous bills have been proposed in Oregon and several other states as well. Numerous companies — including Dell, IBM, Intel, and HP — oppose the laws, as they see them giving Microsoft the power to not only drag them into court, but also futz with their supply chains. (There’s bound to be some counterfeit software being used in Shenzhen, right?) As Microsoft’s latest anti-piracy scheme unfolds, there should be plenty more legislative action to come. Evidently the crew in Redmond doesn’t see piracy as a problem to be fixed by lowering prices.

Microsoft asks state lawmakers to make domestic companies pay for foreign firms’ software piracy originally appeared on Engadget on Sun, 27 Mar 2011 09:12:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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