Apple, Microsoft-Backed Rockstar Consortium Sues Google, Samsung Over 7 Nortel Patents

The Rockstar consortium is an organization backed by Apple, Microsoft, BlackBerry, Ericsson and Sony. It purchased patents off of the defunct telecommunications company Nortel in 2011, in a bidding war with Google. Now, the consortium has filed suit against Google, ASUSTek, HTC, Huawei, LG, Pantech and ZTE over those patents. The suit was filed in a U.S. District Court of Eastern Texas today. “Google placed an initial bid of $900,000,000 for the patents-in-suit and the rest of the Nortel portfolio. Google subsequently increased its bid multiple times, ultimately bidding as high as $4.4 billion,” the filing states. “That price was insufficient to win the auction, as a group led by the current shareholders of Rockstar purchased the portfolio for $4.5 billion. Despite losing in its attempt to acquire the patents-in-suit at auction, Google has infringed and continues to infringe the patents-in-suit.” Google famously bid some not-so-random numbers before the end, including ‘pi'. The suit also involves a licensee of the ‘Associative Search Engine' 6,098,065 patent, NetStar, Inc. The other patents are US 7,236,969, 7,469,245, 7,672,970, 7,895,178, 7,895,183 and 7,933,883. They're mostly fairly dry stuff related to database searches, relevance in advertising presentation and data sorting, but exactly the kind of stuff that makes Google's special sauce work. We can't speak to the strength of the patents, but they certainly appear to be relevant. Google lost out in a heated bidding war against Rockstar and went on to acquire Motorola, a move that many attributed to a patent grab, but that was also about hardware in a lot of ways. Notably, HTC has a cross-licensing agreement with Apple on some patents, but apparently not these. News of the suit was first reported by Reuters today.

Hands On With The Nexus 5 And Android 4.4 KitKat

The Nexus 5 is here! The Nexus 5 is here! After months of hype and more questionably "accidental" leaks than any device in recent memory, Google announced their new flagship Android handset this morning. I've only had the device in my hands for a few hours, so it'll be a few days before I'm ready to give my final yay or nay on this thing. With that said, I recognize that I'm amongst a very lucky few to have access to this thing before they start leaving the warehouse en masse later this week, so I figured I'd share some early impressions. Thoughts so far: It's quite nice looking, though not in a particularly unique way. Look at it from more than a few feet away, and most folks probably wouldn't have any idea what phone they were looking at. It's a big glass screen with a matte black back; I'm… not sure how you could get any more standard. The soft touch backside gets fingerprint-tastic, and fast. I had to wipe it almost constantly for our hands on photos. For reference, I'm using the black device and don't have particularly oily hands. As you'd expect of a device with a nearly 5-inch (4.95 inches, to be specific) screen, it's big. Real big. Any bigger, in fact, and I'd say it's too big. And yet, Google and LG managed to keep it just within the realm of sanity. It's not a strictly two-hand device, but unless you've got hulk hands, expect to need a second hand more often than not. With Android 4.4, Google Search is now automatically integrated into every single page of your homescreen launcher, and can be triggered by voice through an "Okay, Google" hot keyword. Search is always just there. It's quite nice. Google Now is now always the left-most screen on your homescreen, which is a smart move on Google's part. Google Now is incredibly neat (if slightly terrifying) - but, previously stuffed behind a swipe from the very bottom of the screen, it was far too easy to forget it was there. You can still reach it with a swipe up from the bottom, need be. It's smooth. Really smooth. Every transition, every fade in – it's like butter. If it stays this smooth after a few weeks of use, it's by far the smoothest Android experience I've had; alas, that rarely seems to be the case with Android. The camera seems above average, but not mind blowing. I'll save the example shots until I've had a chance to pit it head-to-head with a few comparable devices. The camera is also a bit crashy, though that might be my specific unit; three times now, the camera has just stayed at a black screen when I tried to open it Android 4.4 overhauls the dialer, with the main feature being a knowledge of nearby businesses. Just type a business name into the same field where you'd normally type the first few letters of your friends name, and it pulls up the details for nearby locations. In my early tests, this feature works very well. Typing "Starbucks" pulled up 8+ locations near me (hey, it's San Francisco), broken down by their location, each offering their phone number at a click. It works in reverse, too; I had one of those Starbucks locations call me, and the phone identified the caller as such. Google says all this data is piped in from Google Maps In Google's HDR+ mode (which takes photos in rapid succession and combines the best parts of each into one photo), the camera can be slow. Twice I moved the camera before it was done (but after the shutter sound went off), ending up with a photo of the ground. While Android 4.4 is largely focused on optimizations that allows it to run on lower-end devices, there are a number of lil' subtle changes that really spruce up the place. The top bar and bottom nav bar are both translucent now, allowing the homescreen background to go fullbleed across the screen . The widgets drawer has been moved out from the pop-up app drawer (which always seemed like a weird location), and back to being behind a long press on the home screen (like it was in Android of yesteryear). The Nexus 5 comes in two colors: one black, and one white. $349 gets you a 16GB model, while $399 gets you 32GB. Both of those devices are unlocked and off-contract, mind you - for the price, the hardware stuffed into this phone is rather amazing. Alas, it might be tough to get one for a while. The Nexus 5 just went on sale this morning, and almost immediately sold out. If you're one of the people who got their order in: don't worry, so far I'd say you've made a solid choice. While my notes above may seem neutral (or even neutral-negative), I'm actually pretty darn pleased with the device so far. It feels like they took the Nexus 4, the Moto X, and the HTC One - all three devices of which were devices I really liked - and mashed them together, pulling in many of the best parts of each. If you're already an Android fan or a Nexus 4 owner, you'll like what you see here. If you're an iPhone user, this one really could be the one to convince you to make the switch. I know I'm tempted. Check back in just a few days for our full review. rear cam Lens sidewalk Outdoors profile Profile icons desktop 2 Top desk top Top Held desk rear Rear

Is Comcast Buying The Seattle Mayoral Election To Dodge Homegrown Competition? Not Really

The mayor of Seattle has alleged that Comcast donated significant sums to his rival ahead of the November 5 election. The money could have been donated, perhaps, in hopes of scuttling the planned public-private broadband initiative in the city that could introduce new inexpensive, and fast competitive service. In response to a question during a Reddit AMA asking what would happen to the effort – which will likely be executed with a private firm by the name of Gigabit Squared - Seattle Mayor Mike McGinn said, ”I don't know, but I do know Comcast gave [rival candidate] Murray a big pile of money.” That's a stark implication. The Washington Post reported on the situation, intimating as well that Comcast could be taking a financial interest in the outcome of the election, and therefore is donating to prevent its competitive landscape from becoming steeper. Let's be frank: Comcast wants less competition not more, as do all corporations. It also makes political donations, as do nearly all public companies. It also donates to specific candidates, over time, because it finds the views of those candidates more palatable to its interests and perhaps in hopes of swaying them slightly during their time in elected office. That is simple politics. If any of that surprises you, you are a bit behind. Comcast has donated to McGinn's rival Ed Murray in the past through his tenure as a State Senator. So, the relationship is extant. This election cycle, Comcast has made a direct $700 donation to his campaign, and a Comcast executive named Janet Turpen also donated $500. That sort of company-executive donation is not abnormal. For example, Yahoo and one of its executives have also donated to Murray's mayoral electoral bid this cycle. No one is accusing Yahoo of attempting to buy a vote. Now, the Post goes on to list the following larger and less public donations by Comcast to groups that have put money behind Murray: The Broadband Communications Association of Washington PAC, which received 94 percent of its 2013 contributions from Comcast, donated $5,000 to the group People for Ed Murray less than a month after Gigabit Squared's pricing announcement. That was the PAC's largest single donation. Unsurprisingly, People for Ed Murray has made significant expenditures supporting Murray's candidacy. The Web site of the Broadband Communications Association of Washington also lists Janet Turpen as president-elect. Comcast also donated $5,000 to the PAC called the “Civic Alliance for a Sound Economy,” or CASE, whose largest expenditures were donations to People for Ed Murray, to the tune of $52,500 - over half of the money spent by the group according to the most recent disclosures online. Their second largest expenditures was $10,000 to People for a New Seattle Mayor, a group opposing McGinn's reelection. So, $10,000. That's hardly big money. Perhaps $10,000 speaks more loudly than what is normal in a mayoral election, but the sums here are not out of hand. Comcast, in a statement provided to the Post, denied that it is trying to buy the election or unduly influence it. Which is what you would expect the company to say, of course. As a firm it is spending to have an impact. You don't spend money for no reason, of course. Comcast is supporting Murray because it favors him over McGinn. And given that McGinn has worked on creating a competitor to Comcast, that is hardly surprising. Still, what we lack in all of this a simple answer: Does Murray favor scrapping the public-private broadband pilot, and later the full project? That is not clear. The Post says this: The [Murray] spokesman also committed that, if elected, Murray would honor the current agreements between Gigabit Squared and the city, “but he will also makes sure that the City monitors the company's performance to ensure that they are delivering the promised results as the project moves forward.” In other words, the limited pilot project would likely go forward in a Murray administration, but there's more of a question about whether the rest of Seattle would be offered gigabit service via a private-public partnership. That strikes me as a bit weak. Could it be that Murray is less enthusiastic about the broadband initiative than McGinn? Sure. It's not his project after all. But the intimation that Comcast is trying to shift the election perhaps to dodge this specific bit of competition feels like perhaps sensible speculation, but speculation all the same. Murray can lay this all to rest by simply stating that he is committed to the project - if he is, of course. Simple speech is the best response to innuendo.

Calls To Limit Speech In The Snowden Era Underscore The Importance Of A Free Press

The Snowden revelations have reignited a discussion about privacy - especially privacy in the digital age. That discussion will eventually, we can hope, not only reform how the government views the privacy of its citizens, but also how those citizens interact with private entities that might store massive amounts of their personal information. It's stunning to consider how much better informed we are as a global citizenry thanks to Snowden's efforts and the journalists that have worked closely with him. They have carefully brought to light documents and information regarding the spying efforts of the United States government, and to a lesser degree, the British government on a scale that was previously unimaginable. But the Snowden leaks have done more than uncover a secret world of surveillance. They are starting to drive change at the congressional level. Following revelations that the NSA taps the fiber-optic cables of the Internet, tracks the metadata of all phone calls placed in the United States, and forces technology companies to hand over user data, we've entered into a new era of transparency. There are forces arrayed against this trend, however. The parts of the government that wish to remain hidden are not enjoying their time in the spotlight. United States In short, [NSA General Keith Alexander] is not much of a fan of free speech, an adversarial press, a transparent government, public accountability, or a great many other things that a constitutional, democratic republic requires to function. Change is already under way. Bills in Congress are being proposed, with bipartisan and bicameral support, that would greatly curtail the legal authority, and therefore ability, of the NSA to collect as much data as it currently does. The shifting tone in Congress - most recently and most notably the about-face of Senator Dianne Feinstein on the subject of the NSA - has been matched by a stiffly unshifting tone from the spy agencies themselves. With its track record of being truthful already underwater, the NSA has managed to explain little in recent weeks - and complain much. It has become known that their talking points are as manufactured as their denials – there will come a time when leaning heavily on 9/11 will show weakness of argument, but we can have that talk some other time - now public, the public protestations of the NSA are becoming increasingly cardboardish. But when the NSA and its ilk are clear, we can learn the most. And when it comes to something so intensely serious, clarity is useful. The NSA's General Keith Alexander recently made the following set of remarks (transcription by Politico): “I think it's wrong that that newspaper reporters have all these documents, the 50,000-whatever they have and are selling them and giving them out as if these-you know it just doesn't make sense. We ought to come up with a way of stopping it. I don't know how to do that. That's more of the courts and the policymakers but, from my perspective, it's wrong to allow this to go on.” It's somewhat difficult to tally just how much the general managed to get wrong in two short statements, but let's try. He's wrong that the documents are being sold; they are not. Stopping “it” would mean stopping the free press, in essence overriding the First Amendment. That's not a good idea. He's correct that it would be up to “courts and the policymakers” to gut free speech in the country, but he's wrong in that it is not “wrong to allow this to go on.” In short, the general is not much of a fan of free speech, an adversarial press, a transparent government, public accountability, or a great many other things that a constitutional, democratic republic requires to function. Let's look at just how bad an idea it would be to follow his advice. If we did not allow newspapers, blogs, Twitter users, writers and readers of all shapes and sizes and sorts to publish what they might, and learn what they will, then we would not know that the NSA was tapping the data connections between Yahoo and Google data centers in foreign countries. Why foreign countries? Because the rules that guide the NSA are looser in foreign countries, and so it can do what it can't in the United States. What we have learned is plain: If there is data, the NSA wants to tap, collect, store, and then analyze it at will. Given the history of privacy, and the historical backing of the Fourth Amendment, this isn't much in line with the American Experiment. To then prevent the American citizenry from finding out that their legal protections were being hollowed out not good, and the general is wrong. Britain Across the pond, this is a bit more explicit. Here's The Guardian, in August [emphasis mine]: I received a phone call from the centre of government telling me: “You've had your fun. Now we want the stuff back.” There followed further meetings with shadowy Whitehall figures. The demand was the same: hand the Snowden material back or destroy it. I explained that we could not research and report on this subject if we complied with this request. The man from Whitehall looked mystified. “You've had your debate. There's no need to write any more.” During one of these meetings I asked directly whether the government would move to close down the Guardian's reporting through a legal route – by going to court to force the surrender of the material on which we were working. The official confirmed that, in the absence of handover or destruction, this was indeed the government's intention. Prior restraint, near impossible in the US, was now explicitly and imminently on the table in the UK. The last sentence is key, as it describes a process by which what is fit and not fit to be published is determined before publication. In August The Guardian stated that such a thing was “near impossible” in the United States. And yet, General Alexander recently called for “a way of stopping it,” again with “it” being the reporting about the Snowden documents. Alexaner continued: “It's wrong to allow this to go on.” So, the general is calling for prior restraint, which has long been a firewall between censorship and the public learning what it might. There are fresh threats from the British government, however, that also bear telling. Here's current Prime Minister David Cameron on the continued leaks (via The Guardian): We have a free press, it's very important the press feels it is not pre-censored from what it writes and all the rest of it. The approach we have taken is to try to talk to the press and explain how damaging some of these things can be and that is why the Guardian did actually destroy some of the information and disks that they have. But they've now gone on and printed further material which is damaging. I don't want to have to use injunctions or D notices or the other tougher measures. I think it's much better to appeal to newspapers' sense of social responsibility. But if they don't demonstrate some social responsibility it would be very difficult for government to stand back and not to act. Sadly, his government has already taken to smashing laptops of journalists and threatening prior restraint. He has now introduced new legal methods as potential tools to increase pressure. Also, there is a certain sliminess to the comment that the press “feels it is not pre-censored from what it writes.” There is a large gap between that and the press in fact being free to write whatever it wishes. Hell No It's plain that the governments of the United States and Britain would prefer it if we knew nothing of their surveillance activities. With that in mind, we now do, and they want to stop the continued leaks. But as we are seeing from congressional activity in the United States, the leaks are producing change. Which is precisely what the NSA and GCHQ do not want. Tough. If to get their way they think for a moment we are willing to give up the right to free expression, thought and writing, then they can go to hell.

Being A CIO At Tesla Motors, A Startup That Builds Cars And Its Own IT

Tesla Motors has proven that it can build the most modern cars in the world. And apparently Elon Musk insisted they build their own IT systems and e-commerce platform, too. Most all of Tesla's IT is homegrown, said CIO Jay Vijayan, appearing onstage at the Constellation Research Connected Enterprise event today. The reason: the traditional enterprise resource planning (ERP) systems did not cut it, and the company has a vertically integrated operation that required a custom environment. The speed and agility Tesla needed in an ERP environment could not be found in the market, Vijayan said. SAP's ERP tech was clearly not working for other car manufacturers and Vijayan knew what it would take to implement and update the SAP environment. “Elon said this is not going to cut it,” Vijayan said. In four months, Vijayan and his team of more than 250 built the ERP system, which serves as the foundation of the electric carmaker's operations. Now every department is using the same system without the need for making custom connectors, so different systems can work together. The company also built a world-class e-commerce system that is designed to help people buy cars as seamlessly as possible. Tesla needed to build its own IT and its own e-commerce system due to the fundamental difference in its business model. For decades, auto manufacturers have sold their cars through local dealers, a fixture of every town in America. But Tesla sells its cars directly to customers. All the materials, the processes and the features need an operation that is uniquely designed so Tesla can sell its cars online. Tesla is another example of how much tech is being reinvented by young companies that have to build things themselves for their business models to work.

Ecomm Newcomer Greats Is Building A Brand On Sweet, Affordable Sneakers

Someone should probably go make a Wikipedia page for the “Warby Parker model,” since it has rapidly become the go-to business strategy for online retail startups. The latest addition to the genus Ecommerce Lowoverheadus is Greats, a men's footwear brand that launched in August. The name derives from the ambition to put a fresh spin on the enduring designs in sneaker history. Although that might sound like copycat design, pretty much every shoe brand iterates on others' designs; as with most menswear categories, the classics persist in one form or another. Although their wares are manufactured in the same facilities as upscale lines like Lanvin and Balenciaga, the goal is to create high quality goods while keeping the price point low by cutting out retail overhead. The shoes are priced in the range of $39 to $190, and while early adopters will undoubtedly skew toward sneaker aficionados, the target audience is broad. “We're going to make shoes for men with feet,” co-founder Ryan Babenzien said. Babenzien and his co-founder, Jon Buscemi, are career shoe guys. The former did branding and marketing at K-Swiss and Puma, while Buscemi already has founding another footwear brand, Gourmet Footwear, under his belt. The company raised an angel round of $500,000 last April, at which point they hadn't even opened a bank account, Babenzien said. They were pre-selling in beta until their launch on August 6 and only began shipping three weeks ago. Like Warby, Greats got a lot of early attention from press, including the seal of cool-approval on GQ's blog. Now the team is looking to raise its seed round. More than anything, Greats is aiming to be a label, not a startup with a clever business model. When we spoke, Babenzien came back again and again to the idea of building a brand, and, more importantly, to making sure that the DNA of the product is readily recognizable to consumers from the get-go. (Lest we forget that, the site's URL is greatsbrand.com.) Greats launched with two styles in three colors each and will be rolling out six additional shoes over the course of the next year. Sneakers are a focus in the first batch, but they'll also be adding styles like boots and boat shoes into the mix by the end of 2014. At the moment, Greats's profit margins are 60%, but the team thinks they can get them higher than that. “I could have sold this for $120,” Babenzien said, gesturing at the $99 black leather sneakers he was wearing. “And nobody would have blinked. We wanted to make a real statement.” Part of the team's long-term roadmap is globalizing Greats. Babenzien said they have been seeing web traffic coming from France, England, Asia, Australia, and Canada. “The culture of men's sneakers and footwear is global… we'd like to get to $100 million in revenue in five years,” he said. “I think based on what we've seen, it's well within reach.” They'll also be taking on auxiliary categories. Socks, for instance, are something they could get into in the near term. (“That's more of a strategic category than anything else,” Babenzien said.) Bags and sweatshirts would naturally follow. Because sneakers are part of a youth culture, college age guys form a large portion of Greats's potential market, and the brand has the opportunity to outfit them from the shoes up. The company has been moving quickly since April, and they're wasting no time in getting their products into the offline retail world, as well. On November 9, Greats is opening a hundred square foot shop in a small glass walled shopping complex on Williamsburg's waterfront, which they're calling the “Field House” in reference to the brand's vintage athletic vibe. Customers can buy shoes in the shop, although Babenzien noted that it's the only physical store in which people will be able to make purchases. The store will only be open from noon to 7 pm on weekends, the point being to get consumers touching and test driving Greats shoes, rather than serving as a major retail location. Although having an offline location was always in the team's playbook, they didn't expect to make the move so soon. But the Williamsburg space was cheap and didn't have a lease, so they snatched it up. Greats is also getting product into the real world with two displays at the upscale LA men's store Union and at High Point, a sneaker Mecca in Phoenix. The shoes won't be available for sale at either joint; it's more about building the brand in the context of other sought-after designers. The sneaker market for guys is big, and these shoes, with their buttery leather uppers, are sweet. (Unfortunately for the ladies, they're not running unisex sizes just yet.) The tricky part about online native fashion startups is that the fashion part of the equation - finding the line's voice and aesthetic point of view - so often loses out to a focus on being online native. Young, creative designers fail all the time out of a lack of business acumen, but a fashion label needs direction, achievable through tight branding and great product. The Greats guys get that.

Nomorerack Raises $40M In Series B Financing To Build Depth Across Its Biggest Categories

Less than one year after completing a $12 million Series A round, the multi-category retailer Nomorerack has raised $40 million in Series B financing led by Oak Investment Partners and HTV Industries. Although the company launched as a flash sales site in 2010, Nomorerack has since transitioned to position itself as an online retailer that offers deep discounts across the board in numerous categories. The financing will go toward customer acquisition and building out the depth of its top categories, which include jewelry, apparel, electronics, home and lifestyle. “At the end of the day, when we advertise on [sites like] MSN, the broader we are, the more appealing we are,” CEO Deepak Agarwal said. The company did $9 million in revenue in 2011, north of $100 million in 2012, and is now on track to do close to $300 million, Agarwal said. It's profitable, and about 70 percent of sales are repeat purchases from consumers. They are currently seeing around 5 million monthly unique visitors to the site. The site started off featuring sets of nine items that would stay live for 24 hours before they were swapped out for another batch. Today, there are more than 3,000 deals available at any given time, curated by a 16-person buying team, many of which are live for months at a time. How long any given product remains available on the site is determined by an algorithm on the backend that takes into account revenue and sales volume. “It started out as a daily deal and then over time has evolved to have deep breadth and depth. A lot of products do not get removed from the site. Whereas before, when we launched, they would only last for 24 hours.” The site is able to offer discounts to consumers by buying directly from manufacturers and disrupting the typical retail pricing chain. Agarwal said that while Nomorerack is taking market share away from brick-and-mortar stores like TJ Maxx, Target and Walmart, their consumers are shopping on similar sites like eBay and Amazon. The site recently launched a full-scale jewelry boutique, a mechanism for building depth that they would like to apply to apparel and home, as well. The manufacturing chains for apparel and jewelry are especially ripe for disruption, Agarwal said, as there is a particularly high discrepancy between the manufacture cost and retail price of both. It's not dissimilar to the recent push Amazon has made in the fashion category. Home, the site's biggest category, currently accounts for 30 percent of sales dollars, with electronics coming in second and fashion in third. Acquiring customers is the company's biggest expense, Agarwal said. The team is largely based on display advertising, with about 80 percent of marketing dollars going in that direction. That means advertising on sites like AOL, Yahoo, Facebook and Google, as well as running national television commercials, which Agarwal described as an effective driver for them.