Hasta La Gadget!

If you’re going broke, look for reasons to sue rich people. That seems to be the strategy behind a Taiwanese company’s threat to take legal action against Apple.

Struggling Taiwanese company Proview told Financial Times that it plans to sue Apple over infringement of the trademark “iPad.” Proview over a decade ago made an unsuccessful attempt to sell a tablet computer called I-Pad, according to FT, and the company had registered for the IPAD trademark between 2000 and 2004.

Apple does not comment on pending litigation.

Trademark feuds are common among the tech industry. Large corporations, including Apple, aggressively defend trademarks to prevent competitors from profiting off their successful brands or creating consumer confusion. For example, Apple has been battling a small startup over usage of the trademark “Pod,” and Facebook recently filed a trademark infringement lawsuit against startup Teachbook over the use of the word “book.”

In Proview’s case, however, it doesn’t have much to protect. The company admits it just needs some dough.

“It is arrogant of Apple to just ignore our rights and go ahead selling the iPad in this market, and we will oppose that,” said Yang Rongshan, Proview’s chairman. “Besides that, we are in big financial trouble and the trademarks are a valuable asset that could help us sort out part of that trouble.”

See Also:

• Apple, Startup Go to Trial Over Pod Trademark
• Appeals Court Sides With eBay in Tiffany Trademark Suit
• Teachbook Vows Facebook Trademark Suit Fight
• GM Wants to Trademark 'Range Anxiety'
• Apple Registers Trademark for 'There's an App for That'

Photo of customers buying Apple iPads: Bryan Derballa/Wired.com

Mechanics spot strange things stuck under cars all the time, but when 20-year-old Yasir Afifi’s ride was put up on lifts his shop found something that hadn’t been kicked up from the road: a cylindrical tube connected to a device with an antenna. An extremely paranoid person would think they’d found a bomb, but the truth isn’t much better. It was an FBI tracking device. Afifi posted pictures and his story on Reddit while a friend contemplated cunning things to do with it, sticking it to someone else’s car or selling it on Craigslist. They didn’t have long to ponder long before two “sneaky-looking” people were spotted outside his apartment. Afifi got in his car and drove off, only to be pulled over by FBI agents who demanded the device back, threatening “We’re going to make this much more difficult for you if you don’t cooperate.”

Now, we’ve already given our opinions on using GPS technology like this and, while it’s unknown whether these agents had a warrant to place this device, the 9th US Court of Appeals recently made one unnecessary for this sort of thing. The ACLU is working with Afifi to fight that ruling, and for now we’re hoping that he, who is an American with an Egyptian father, is currently able to hit the town without agents following his every move. However, at this point they may not need a tracker: one agent who retrieved the device took the time to list off his favorite restaurants and even congratulated him on his new job.

American student finds GPS tracker stuck to car, FBI shows up to reclaim its ‘federal property’ originally appeared on Engadget on Fri, 08 Oct 2010 08:16:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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The 9th Circuit Court of Appeals just decided that it was legal for the police to put a GPS tracking device on your car, sitting in your driveway, on your property. Here’s how to protect yourself. More »

If you ranked the things in life that Jobs seems perfectly content to ignore, license plates would be up there with Handicap parking spaces, three-piece suits and customer demands. The proof, as it were, is all over Flickr. More »

After a week of rumors hinting at Google and Verizon brokering some sort of net neutrality “deal,” the two companies made some waves this afternoon with a hastily-arranged press call during which CEOs Eric Schmidt and Ivan Seidenberg emphatically denied any sort of formal business arrangement and instead put forth what they called a “joint policy proposal” — seven principles they say will preserve the open internet while allowing network operators the flexibility and freedom to manage their networks.

What’s interesting is that the announcement comes just few days after the FCC declared its closed-door net-neutrality meetings with ISPs and other interested parties to be dead — it’s odd for Google and Verizon to claim their new proposal is just an extension of their joint statement in general support of net neutrality from last October when it’s very clearly an articulation of a specific plan that was undoubtedly proposed and rejected during those failed meetings.

Now, we don’t know for sure what happened, but we’ve got a theory: the proposal reads to us like Verizon’s basically agreeing to trade neutrality on its wired networks for the right to control its wireless network any way it wants — apart from requiring wireless carriers and ISPs to be “transparent” about network management, none of the neutrality principles that govern wired networks will apply to wireless networks. That’s a big deal — it’s pretty obvious that wireless broadband will be the defining access technology for the next generation of devices and services. But you know us, and we don’t do hysterics when we can do reasoned analysis instead — so grab a copy of the official Verizon / Google Legislative Framework Proposal right here and let’s break it down step by step, shall we?

Continue reading Google and Verizon’s net neutrality proposal explained

Google and Verizon’s net neutrality proposal explained originally appeared on Engadget on Mon, 09 Aug 2010 17:51:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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