Tag Archive for Business

| September 10, 2010
Comments Off on Microsoft Founder Sues GOOG, FB and AAPL

Microsoft Founder Sues GOOG, FB and AAPL

Microsoft Founder Sues GOOG, FB and AAPL– Updated 12-13-10 – Physorg is reporting that a U.S. district judge tossed out the patent infringement lawsuit filed by Interval Licensing owned by Microsoft co-founder Paul Allen. The judge ruled that the suit failed to specify devices or products violating patents at issue in the case. A spokesman for Allen dismissed the ruling as a procedural matter and said that an amended complaint will be filed addressing the judge’s concern.

– Updated – Google responded to the suit by stating in court documents  “Interval’s complaint is so devoid of any facts to support its infringement contentions that it is impossible for Google to reasonably prepare a defense.” According to VON | xchange Apple agreed and called on judges to “insist upon some specificity” before proceeding.

The UK’s Guardian is reporting that eleven major Internet companies including AOL, Apple, eBay, Facebook, Google, Netflix, Office Depot, OfficeMax, Staples, Yahoo, and YouTube are being sued by Interval Licensing. The firm, lead by ex-Microsoft founder Paul Allen is suing for alleged infringement of patents that relate to e-commerce and search. A copy of the complaint is available here (PDF). Notably absent from the list are Microsoft and Amazon.com. Amazon, the Seattle e-commerce giant just moved into a new headquarters campus developed by Allen’s Vulcan Inc. Interval is seeking damages and the end of the infringement. Among the patents being contested are:

  • 6,263,507: “Browser for use in navigating a body of information, with particular  application to browsing information represented by audio data.”
  • 6,034,652 & 6,788,314 (really the same patent, involving continuations): “Attention manager for occupying the peripheral attention of a person in the vicinity of a display device.”
  • 6,757,682: “Alerting users to items of current interest”
  • TechFlash has a deeper analysis of these patents.

Microsoft founder Paul AllenGoogle and Facebook told the Guardian they will fight the accusations by Interval. “This lawsuit against some of America’s most innovative companies reflects an unfortunate trend of people trying to compete in the courtroom instead of the marketplace,” a Google spokesperson said in an emailed statement to the Guardian. “Innovation – not litigation – is the way to bring to market the kinds of products and services that benefit  millions of people around the world.” Facebook spokesperson Andrew Noyes  said: “We believe this suit is completely without merit and we will fight it vigorously.”

The Guardian reports that these claims have led to accusations by some observers that Allen, who is worth a reported $13.5bn is acting as a “patent troll” – suing active companies via patents obtained by now-defunct or inactive companies which are not actively developing technology.  However, David Postman, an Interval official, defended the lawsuit as necessary to protect its investment in innovation.”We are not asserting patents that other companies have filed, nor are we buying patents originally assigned to someone else,” he told the Guardian. “These are patents developed by and for Interval.” Allen is not a named inventor on any of the patents according to Bloomberg.

Allen co-founded Interval Research in 1992 to develop communications and computer technology. The firm was reportedly designed to be a pure research institute “done right” which would replicate Xerox PARC, but that it would actually commercialize the amazing ideas. At its largest, it employed more than 110 scientists and engineers, and filed patents covering internet search and display innovations, according to the lawsuit. Interval Research officially closed in April 2000 when its 300+ patents were taken over by Interval Licensing.

Apparently, Allen has support from another tech founder. TechDirt reports that Apple co-founder Steve Wozniak comes out in favor of “patent trolls” and patent holders suing companies who actually innovate. Woz told Bloomberg TV that patents somehow help out the small guy (Paul Allen, the 37th-richest person in the world?):

I think this lawsuit represents the idea that hey, patents, individual inventors, they don’t have the funds to go up against big companies. So he’s sorta representing some original investors. And I’m not at all against the idea of patent trolls.

The Bloomberg interviewer points out that Paul Allen is not the inventor and there’s no sign that the inventors on these patents would actually get any of the money should Allen succeed. Woz says that Allen “represents inventors.” According to TechDirt Woz seems uninformed about the patent world today. For example, the interviewer notes that dealing with patents has become a “cost of doing business” and Woz seems to think that’s a good thing:

Every tech company is very aware that patents are really the heart of our innovation and invention system and (a) that you have to have your own patent position and you gotta be aware that there might be others. And, yes, you might be infringing. It’s very awkward, because some patents are so general. It’s hard to say how they’ll be interpreted. There’s a lot of ambiguity in the system.

Apple co-founder Steve WozniakTechDirt notes the irony that in Woz’s autobiography iWoz, he talked about how much of a success Apple was without relying on patents at the beginning.

Patents on software and business processes have become a lightning rod issue for web companies. They claim that patents act as a financial drag on innovation and that the US Patent Office (USPTO) is especially poor at examining patent claims for “prior art” which would disqualify them, or that it awards patents on needlessly wide claims which mean that it is almost impossible for companies to use accepted web technologies without accidentally infringing on them.

One of the most notable was Amazon’s 1997 patent for its “1-Click” shopping system, which was, accepted and then rejected and finally passed by the USPTO in March 2010. Amazon has licensed the technology to Apple, among others. Other infamous software patent abuses include:

  • British Telecom attempted to claim a patent on the hyperlink; its claim collapsed in 2002 on the basis that the patent referred to a “central computer” – which the internet does not have.
  • SCO sued IBM, Red Hat, Novell. AutoZone and DaimlerChrysler for claimed patents rights that would cover significant parts of the free Linux operating system.

 

Ralph Bach has been in IT long enough to know better and has blogged from his Bach Seat about IT, careers, and anything else that catches his attention since 2005. You can follow him on LinkedIn, Facebook, and Twitter. Email the Bach Seat here.

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| August 23, 2010
Comments Off on 80% of US Job Seekers Wont Get Jobs Soon

80% of US Job Seekers Wont Get Jobs Soon

80% of US Job Seekers Wont Get Jobs SoonThe U.S. Labor Department recently reported that the unemployment rate held steady at 9.5%. The analysts at Chart of the Day crunched some numbers and it looks like the U.S. is not out of the economic woods yet. According to Chart of the Day, assuming that the depression, economic uncertainty, recession ended in June 2009, the current unemployment rate is exactly where it was at the end of the recession (9.5%). They offer some perspective on the current state of the job market, their chart illustrates the amount of time it took for the unemployment rate to ultimately dip below (and stay below) its recession-end level for each recession since the late 1940s.

For example, at the end of the recession that ended in November 1982, the unemployment rate stood at 10.8%. As the chart illustrates, it took two months for the unemployment rate to drop below (and stay below) the recession-end level of 10.8%.

The Economic Policy Institute (EPI) pointed out last March that to absorb the nearly 15 million officially unemployed workers in this country, plus the roughly 2.6 million “marginally attached” workers (jobless workers who want a job but have given up actively seeking work and are not counted as officially unemployed), job openings and hiring must rebound dramatically.

The latest EPI numbers say that for every job filled, there are still 5 people who cannot find a job. In this environment of constant right-sizing, resource actions, mass-hiring, firms are stockpiling cash and not making things. The cash stock-piles are huge. The BusinessInsider has this graphic which says it all in my opinion.

Bloomberg reported in February that a  majority of companies in the Standard & Poor’s 500 stock index increased cash to a combined $1.18 trillion while simultaneously reducing spending, keeping a jobs recovery on hold. Bloomberg reports that firms such as:

  • Caterpillar Inc.
  • Eaton Corp.
  • Walgreen Co.
  • General Electric Co.

are among 256 companies that ended last quarter with billions more cash than a year earlier after cutting capital spending by 43 percent. Bloomberg economists say the dearth of investment is keeping the jobless rate at about 10 percent.

According to a Washington Post article,  non-financial companies are sitting on $1.8 trillion in cash, roughly one-quarter more than at the beginning of the recession. The Post sites a survey of more than 1,000 chief financial officers by Duke University and CFO magazine showed that nearly 60 percent of those executives don’t expect to bring their employment back to pre-recession levels until 2012 or later — even though they’re projecting a 12 percent rise in earnings and a 9 percent boost in capital spending over the next year.

It is noteworthy that, over the past two decades, it has taken much longer (on average) for the unemployment rate to drop below its recession-end level. The reasons for this increased time for the unemployment rate to turn around varies. One explanation that Chart of the Day offers is that following World War II, the US found itself in a strong/dominant economic position. It took time, but eventually many of the remaining world economies began to recover and we are now witnessing increased competition as a result of the rise of the rest.

If it is globalization or corporate greed, the lack of jobs in the U.S. means 80% of job seeks are out of luck. “The 5-to-1 ratio means that there is literally only one job opening for every five unemployed workers. That is, for every four out of five unemployed workers there simply are no jobs” explains EPI economist Heidi Shierholz.

 

Ralph Bach has been in IT long enough to know better and has blogged from his Bach Seat about IT, careers, and anything else that catches his attention since 2005. You can follow him on LinkedIn, Facebook, and Twitter. Email the Bach Seat here.

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| August 13, 2010
Comments Off on Another Tech Loss for Michigan?

Another Tech Loss for Michigan?

Another Tech Loss for Michigan?Earlier this week Texas-based Tektronix Communications announced it had acquired Arbor Networks, which makes software for network security and management. Arbor Networks employs about 90 people in Ann Arbor and 270 worldwide. According to Xconomy-Boston. Farnam Jahanian, who is chair of computer science and engineering at the University of Michigan, formed Arbor Networks in 2000 with Rob Malan, who was Jahanian’s Ph.D. student at the U-M and is now Arbor’s chief technology officer (he will stay on as CTO).

Arbor Network’s core technology, based on Malan’s and Jahanian’s research, involves software that monitors entire computer networks, from data centers and Internet service providers to broadband customers and mobile interfaces. According to the article, the firm’s products protect its customers against all manner of security threats, most notably, denial-of-service attacks that can shut down big networks and popular websites. Jahanian and Malan’s team raised a Series A venture round in 2000, led by Battery Ventures and Cisco Systems, and then a Series B round in 2002, led by Thomas Weisel Venture Partners. Those two rounds, the only outside funding taken by the company, were worth about $33 million.

Arbor CEO, Colin Doherty, told Xconomy-Boston that Danaher (NYSE: DHR), a Washington D.C.-based technology conglomerate, owns Tektronix Communications. According to Doherty, Arbor will stay “whole and intact as an operating unit under the Danaher brand.” The company will become part of Danaher’s communications and enterprise group which comprises a half-dozen companies, including Tektronix Communications, Fluke Networks, and AirMagnet.

Arbor will give its new parent company deep Internet security knowledge, what Doherty calls a “security beachhead.” Now “they can detect, secure, and mitigate network security. It was a really good fit for them,” he says. Doherty told xconomy.com that with Danaher’s size and influence, “it’s a unique opportunity for us to change our model…and be part of a larger public vehicle.” Financial terms of the deal weren’t disclosed, and the principals at Arbor and Danaher weren’t saying much beyond the platitudes that typically follow such a merger.

For his part, Jahanian who is exiting the company calls the Danaher acquisition a natural next step in Arbor’s broader evolution. “It’s another inflection point,” he said in the article, and it will help the firm “expand into a new emerging market.” David Munson, the dean of engineering at the University of Michigan, says he is “heartened that the acquisition of Arbor Networks calls for Arbor’s research and development activity to remain in Ann Arbor. This is a cornerstone for Ann Arbor’s rapidly developing software and networking industry” in the article.

Doherty did not offer Xconomy.com many specifics on the new firm’s commitment to Michigan, other than the usual corporate platitudes that Arbor will “continue to grow our presence in Ann Arbor and in Chelmsford (MA).” However, even the U-M professor admits Michigan does not cut it for big-time Tech. “We knew we could build a phenomenal R&D team in Ann Arbor,” Jahanian says. “But to recruit the quality of executives [we wanted], we had to be either on the East or West Coast.” The combination of Battery Ventures being in the Boston area, the strong local business talent, and proximity to the East Coast’s big wireless carriers and Internet service providers swung the decision in Boston’s favor, he told Xconomy.com.

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From where I sit, the DHR product lines seem to be a good match for Arbor’s, but it is only a matter of time before the bean-counters in charge at DHR decide that even a “phenomenal R&D team in Ann Arbor” is too expensive and Michigan (and the US) will lose 90 more leading-edge, well-paying jobs.  Another example of how tech unaware Michigan is that Xconomy-Detroit did not cover this, the article came from Boston.

Related articles
  • Arbor Networks Partners With Ingram Micro in Asia Pacific to Help Enterprises Mitigate DDoS Threats to Their Businesses (prweb.com)

 

Ralph Bach has been in IT long enough to know better and has blogged from his Bach Seat about IT, careers, and anything else that catches his attention since 2005. You can follow him on LinkedIn, Facebook, and Twitter. Email the Bach Seat here.

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| July 13, 2010
Comments Off on Free Antivirus Rules Market

Free Antivirus Rules Market

Free Antivirus Rules MarketOPSWAT, Inc. a provider of integration technologies to software developers and vendors recently released a report on the use of antivirus applications. According to the report, free products control 42% of the product market, and vendors that primarily offer a free product have a 48% market share.

The top 10 Windows antivirus applications for January to May 2010 according to OPSWAT were:

  • avast! Free Antivirus 11.45%
  • Avira AntiVir Personal – Free Antivirus 9.19%
  • AVG AntiVirus Free 8.6%
  • Microsoft Security Essentials 7.48%
  • avast! Antivirus 5.4%
  • Kaspersky Internet Security 4.48%
  • Norton AntiVirus 4.24%
  • ESET NOD32 Antivirus 3.84%
  • avast! Antivirus Professional 3.5%
  • McAfee VirusScan 3.26%

opswat AV market share graph 2010

This data indicates that free products account for 42% of the market. From a vendor perspective, European vendors, total just over 50% of the market which include:

  • AVAST,
  • Avira,
  • AVG,
  • ESET,
  • Panda,
  • BitDefender,
  • G Data and
  • Sophos.

Whereas US-based vendors, make up just over 30% include:

Vendors that primarily offer a free product have a 48% market share.

The top 10 Windows antivirus vendors by market share for January to May 2010 according to OPSWAT were:

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According to the firm’s website, OPSWAT collected information from tens of thousands of volunteers out of the 50 million endpoints that use the OESIS Framework and the free Am I OESIS OK? online utility with which end users can check the interoperability and quality level of their applications.  I have said this before, with other fun factoids like this, the adoption rate of the vendor’s tools may skew the results. Nonetheless, it is notable that

  • Microsoft, not usually seen as a security vendor has captured a significant share with their recent anti-virus solutions and could be a legitimate challenger to pure-play security players Symantec and McAfee.
  • Symantec and McAfee who are often seen as the top choices in the U.S. do not do well in this list. This data seems to show that AV competition is alive and well in the highly fragmented consumer sector.
  • The fragmented marketplace may help keep innovation active in the AV market, which is a good thing in the face of the increasing variety of threats from malware.

So despite the claims of this or that vendor to dominate a market based on sales numbers, the OPSWAT data seems to show that end-users have developed a degree of trust in free antivirus applications to keep them secure as they do with paid antivirus.

Related articles

 

Ralph Bach has been in IT long enough to know better and has blogged from his Bach Seat about IT, careers, and anything else that catches his attention since 2005. You can follow him on LinkedIn, Facebook, and Twitter. Email the Bach Seat here.

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| March 21, 2010
Comments Off on Michigan Firms Barred From H-1B Program

Michigan Firms Barred From H-1B Program

eWeekMichigan Firms Barred From H-1B's is reporting that the U.S. Department of Labor’s Wage and Hour Division has debarred two Michigan-based firms for being willful violators of laws that regulate H-1B visas for foreign workers. During the debarment period, these companies are not allowed to apply for or obtain H-1B visas for foreign workers. These IT companies have “committed either a willful failure or a misrepresentation of a material fact,” according to Labor Department statistics.

Employer: R-Tech Group, Ltd. (also known as R-Tech, Ltd.)
City: Keego Harbor, Michigan
Debarment Period: 1/1/2009 to 12/31/2010

Employer: Amtech Electrocircuits
City: Troy, Michigan
Debarment Period: 3/1/2008 to 2/28/2010

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Umm isn’t Michigan’s unemployment rate over 14%?

 

Ralph Bach has been in IT long enough to know better and has blogged from his Bach Seat about IT, careers, and anything else that catches his attention since 2005. You can follow him on LinkedIn, Facebook, and Twitter. Email the Bach Seat here.

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