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Apple told a judge that Samsung’s Galaxy Note 10.1 device infringes its patents, and sought to add the Android 4.1 Jelly Bean operating system to an existing lawsuit against Samsung in California.
Apple made the arguments to U.S. Magistrate Judge Paul S. Grewal in federal court in San Jose. Apple’s bid to expand the lawsuit follows Samsung’s Oct. 1 move to add patent- infringement claims against the iPhone 5 in the same case. Apple won a $1.05 billion jury verdict against Samsung on Aug. 24 in a separate patent case in the same court. Filings by both companies in their two cases before U.S. District Judge Lucy Koh show no let-up in their battle on four continents to retain dominance in the $219 billion global smartphone market.
Apple Says Samsung’s Galaxy Note, Jelly Bean Infringe Patents
Priorities USA Action, a Barack Obama-supporting political action committee, has blanketed Twitter with ad buys, winning the Promoted Tweet bids for search/hashtag terms for Election, Election2012, Obama, Romney, Biden, Ryan, Romney/Ryan and Obama/Biden. The Service Employees International Union (SEIU) was also bidding on the terms and running pro-Obama ads.
Obama's Twitter Bid on Election Eve
Pandora Media, the biggest Internet radio service, sued the organization representing songwriters and composers to seek lower license fees for playing their songs.
Pandora, which is also lobbying the U.S. Congress for lower royalties on recordings, today asked a federal court in New York to set “reasonable” license fees from the American Society of Composers, Authors and Publishers through 2015. Pandora is seeking a blanket licensing fee that would cover all songs represented by the 435,000-member group. The radio service has said the current fees prevent profitability. ASCAP and Pandora reached an “experimental” fee agreement in 2005 that lasted until 2010. Terms of their current arrangement weren’t disclosed in the filing. “The license rates and other material terms of the 2005 license agreement were presented to Pandora by ASCAP as being effectively non-negotiable,” the company said in court papers. Pandora said the “experimental license agreement” it reached in 2005 for Internet sites and services “was ill-suited and not reasonable.”
Pandora Media Sues ASCAP Seeking Lower Songwriter Fees
Every Broadway show took a financial beating thanks to Hurricane Sandy and its aftermath, with the musical “Nice Work If You Can Get It” and the play “Grace” suffering most — each down 50 per cent at the box office from the week before. All told, Broadway shows lost roughly $8.5 million in ticket sales due to cancelled performances, a calculation based on comparing box office grosses during Sandy and the equivalent period last year, according to a spokeswoman for the Broadway League, a trade association of theater owners and producers.
For the week ending Nov. 4, Broadway ticket sales were down $6.5 million from the previous week, for a gross of $13.6 million. Ticket sales were also lost on Sunday Oct. 28 due to performance cancellations as Sandy approached. The League spokeswoman noted that Broadway’s losses due to cancellations were greater from Hurricane Irene, which took place during a weekend in a relatively busy summer season in 2011. Sixty-six performances were cancelled as a result of Irene, compared to 48 for Sandy.
Broadway Box Office Takes an Estimated $8.5 Million Hurricane Hit
Sprint Nextel is already shuttering the old push-to-talk Nextel network, but it will officially shed the name when it closes its $20 billion deal with Softbank. The move sheds another piece of Sprint’s disastrous purchase of Nextel in 2005. How bad was the deal? By 2008, the company had written down nearly $30 billion related to the merger, which was pretty much the entire stock value of Nextel before the deal was announced.
Sprint Shedding Nextel Name After Softbank Deal
[Commentary] Mobile advertising is growing rapidly. Total spend in the U.S. during the first half of this year hit $1.2 billion — a staggering 95 percent jump from last year, according to an October report from the Interactive Advertising Bureau and PricewaterhouseCoopers. Many forecasts predict that this growth won’t slow, and I believe them. Viewing this through the prism of mobile display, it’s clear to see that critical needs are being served. Display can build brand exposure and heighten awareness. Plus, display is easy to buy. However, this is where the trouble starts. Data is hard to come by, reporting is opaque, and tonnage trumps targeting. All advertisers have to do is sign up with one of the myriad mobile ad networks and, boom! Banners go everywhere, shares of ad networks soar and everybody wins. Party like it’s 1999.
Actually, this whole thing feels like deja vu all over again. The parallels between desktop display back then and mobile display right now are downright eerie. We have to learn from the past. Because, in advertising, there’s this huge iceberg called performance. And that iceberg is even bigger in mobile. You’re dealing with more fragmentation at the publisher level (such as thousands of developer apps), significantly different form factor (smaller screens), and much higher rates of accidental clicks and incidence of spam (robo-dialers). Increasingly, businesses will want to know, “Does mobile work?” The future of mobile advertising depends on what that answer is.
[Christothoulou is the president of Marchex , a mobile advertising company]
Does Mobile Display 2012 = Online Display 1999?
The US cable industry, hoping to revive innovation and beat back the emergence of online video, is turning for ideas to Silicon Valley.
Leading players from Time Warner Cable to Comcast will next year set up a showpiece research center in the heart of a region that has spawned recent momentous trends, from social networking to the mobile revolution. Spearheaded by Louisville, Colorado-based CableLabs, a nonprofit research and development consortium established by the industry, the center hopes to work on projects with startups and established firms; hire engineers; and engage leading universities such as Stanford in experimenting on new tech. The cable industry is grappling with a persistently poor service reputation while fending off stiff competition from Internet-based services like Netflix Inc and Hulu.
Cable industry seeks out Silicon Valley pizzazz
Newspapers are demolishing their paywalls for another major event: the 2012 election.
- The New York Times will suspend its paywall again from 6 p.m. EST on Election Day until 6 p.m. the following evening.
- The Wall Street Journal is now planning a “global open house” for the election from 5 p.m. Nov 6 until 5 p.m. Nov 7, during which time all WSJ.com Web and mobile content will be free.
- Although the Financial Times won’t be completely dropping its paywall for the election, it is posting a special “read-for-free” feature by editor Lionel Barber that will include “a close look at the campaign journey and the impact it will have on future elections.” An election live blog (which began at 2 a.m.) and related FT.com video are also accessible without a subscription.
Newspapers Lower Paywalls for Election
The American Federation of Television and Radio Artists (AFTRA) Foundation announced the creation of a $50,000 fund to support and aid active SAG-AFTRA members in their recovery from the devastation caused by Hurricane Sandy. News of the emergency aid plan came one day after the Screen Actors Guild Foundation announced it had partnered with the Screen Actors Guild Motion Picture Players Welfare Fund to create a Superstorm Sandy Emergency Assistance Fund for SAG-AFTRA members. The American Federation of Television and Radio Actors Foundation Hurricane Relief Fund will be administered by the Actors Fund in New York. SAG-AFTRA members are eligible to apply for the AFTRA relief funds if they are currently active and have paid their dues through the May 2012 billing cycle. Grants of up to $1,000 will be administered by the Actors Fund through a confidential and streamlined process aimed at aiding members quickly and effectively as they rebuild and recover from the superstorm.
AFTRA Foundation Sets Hurricane Sandy Relief Fund for SAG-AFTRA Members
According to Dun & Bradstreet CIO Walt Hauck the companies that "get" big data and use it to better serve their customers will be the "haves." Those that don't might as well open a corner bookstore. "I think big data is the beginning of the 'haves' and 'have-nots',” Hauck says. "You're either going to be able to take your data, manipulate it, and understand it at scale, or you're going to follow those that do." Hauck isn't talking about the data that comes from Twitter feeds and Facebook "likes."
That grabs headlines, but the real value in big data is better understanding what you already know:
- Why do your customers do what they do?
- What is it about your products or services that resonates with your customers?
- What do your customers need, and what do they need more of?
- How are you going to use what you know about your customers to do what you do better, attract new clients, open new markets and so on?
How big data will separate haves from have-nots