The ongoing battle between Foxconn-led Sharp Electronics and Chinese TV maker Hisense continues unabated as Sharp piles on litigation. Sharp has filed complaints against alleged Hisense product development practices as well as claimed misuse of the Sharp TV brand that Hisense licenses in the U.S. market. At the same time, further pressure on Hisense is […]
Archive | Intellectual property
The Cloud: Is it the Next Intellectual Property Battleground?
As the smartphone patent war era slows down (with some exception), the next big and unruly intersection of computing tech and intellectual property rights (IPR) is taking place in the cloud. There will likely be less drama than in smartphone litigation, but sorting out IP for cloud computing has the potential to be just as, […]
Amazon Is Building a Video Empire to Crush All Rivals
Amazon is a rather unique public company. Rather than redirect its profits (when there are profits) to shareholders, its founder and president Jeff Bezos famously prefers to re-invest its huge cash inflows into furthering the business and taking bets on the future. One of Amazon’s biggest bets is video. This year, the company is likely […]
Tech Emerging Markets: IP Owners Cutting New Deals
Variable royalty pricing for the right to use proprietary technologies in high-tech consumer products is a trend that is afoot. While it lacks the drama of the Apple vs. Samsung smartphone patent wars, it is happening for some of the same reasons. Recent developments have both patent-pool licensors and individual companies creating a two-tier royalty […]
Do You Know Where Your Personal Data Is?
A recent intellectual property and licensing conference got me rethinking about the ownership of personal data. I say “rethinking” because I assumed that ship sailed long ago with Big Data Inc.—Google, Facebook, Microsoft, etc.—securely at the helm. After all, most of us have turned over the rights to our personal information a long time ago […]
Making it in Emerging Markets: Do the Math
Some cycles never divert from their persistent patterns. The moon waxes and wanes. Birds get pushed from nest to flight. Electronic devices find their first successes in developed markets and then look for success in emerging markets. That last pattern, however, doesn’t happen quite as organically as the others do. A lot of strategizing, accounting […]
Tech Giant IP Love Fest? Probably Not
Battles among today’s big dogs of high tech can create some pretty dramatic headlines. This is particularly true for intellectual property battles—especially when those battles come with multibillion dollar price tags and the threat of product-distribution injunctions. One bad judgement or verdict can send stock prices plummeting and execs running for cover. It’s a lot […]
Smartphone Patent Wars: Is There a Sequel?
As China’s National Development and Reform Commission (NDRC) wraps up its investigation into the licensing and intellectual property practices of Qualcomm, there may be another smartphone intellectual property squabble way out on the horizon. As the Apple/Samsung patent war raged, developed markets become saturated with smartphones. Now suppliers are looking to developing markets like China […]
A Troll is a Troll is a Troll?
The introduction of the SHIELD* Act (H.R. 845) into the United States Congress, has, along with other activities, stirred up a hornet’s nest of rhetoric about bolstering American entrepreneurs and technical innovators. The hornet’s sting is reserved for what are informally referred to as patent trolls – a reference to the fairy tale of the […]
A Radical Change Coming for the Broadcast Industry?
There’s nothing like a crisis to move a group into action. At two recent broadcast conferences — DVB World (last month) and NAB (April 8-11) – there was, for the first time, a sense of urgency among a growing faction of traditional broadcasters to adopt radical business and technology changes. The message was clear: Without […]