Apple extends olive branch to Motorola, Samsung?

Could the end to patent litigation be over?

(Credit: Apple)

Apple has indicated a willingness to cut licensing deals with its competitors, according to the Dow Jones Newswires. That would end a tidal wave of lawsuits around the world.
Could an end to the litigation between Apple and its rivals be in sight?
Apple, for its part, may be looking to resolve its various lawsuits, and has signaled a willingness to cut licensing deals with Samsung Electronics and Motorola Mobility, the Dow Jones Newswires reported today, citing anonymous sources.
A licensing deal would put to an end an ugly and distracting period where smartphone companies have been going after each other both in the marketplace and in the courtroom. Apple had begun its legal offensive against Android vendor roughly two years ago in a bid to halt the momentum of the operating system and to extract a penalty for what it felt was the infringement of key smartphone features.
The news comes after Apple has suffered through a series of court rulings with mixed results. With one lawsuits after another getting filed by Apple and its competitors, there doesn't appear to be any resolution to the fighting.
Apple and Samsung weren't immediately available to comment to CNET. Motorola declined to comment, but a spokeswoman noted that the company is open to licensing deals.
The collection of minor victories and defeats--which only add to the pressure to keep the litigation going--has Apple considering a different tactic in legal settlements, Dow Jones Newswires reported. Apple is more amenable to a resolution now because of the widespread proliferation of Android, making a ban difficult to enforce.
HTC, for instance, was found guilty of infringing on one of Apple's patents, but the U.S. International Trade Commission gave HTC time to remove the infringing technology and use a technical solution that gets around the patent.
Apple has largely gone after Google's vendor partner, as opposed to Google itself. But that changes later this year once Google completes its acquisition of Motorola, which is stocked with 17,500 patents and 6,500 pending applications.
That Apple is willing to strike a licensing deal isn't new. Apple had previously offered to license its technology to Samsung, and has licensing agreements with Nokia and IBM.
Apple is asking for $5 to $15 per handset for some of its patents, Dow Jones Newswires reported, which equates to 1 percent to 2.5 percent of the net sales for the device. The report noted that Motorola has been criticized for asking for 2.25 percent of net sales.
Ideally, Apple would prefer to hold out until it scores a major legal victory--one that would ban a company's Android products from a major market and force a company to settle. But with the pace of the ligation and number of lawsuits piling up in different countries, the company could wait a long time--if ever--for such an outcome.

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Barcelona has big mobile dreams

Barcelona has big mobile dreams.

As the home for Mobile World Congress until 2018, the Spanish city is aiming to be the planet's premier showcase for mobile technology.
With a lovely Mediterranean location, an Olympic history, and a wealth of Modernisme architecture, Barcelona, Spain, is one of the planet's top tourist destinations. And if city officials have their way, the Catalan capital will be known as the "Mobile World Capital," as well.
Since the annual Mobile World Congress trade show moved to Barcelona from Cannes, France, in 2006, the city has invested heavily to keep the event, which attracted an estimated 67,000 attendees (and their expense accounts) over the course of the 2012 show last week. And last July, Barcelona got its wish when it beat out Paris, Milan, and Munich for the right to host the show until 2018.

The Fira's Montjuic and the Venetian Towers

Adam Sedo, the press chief at Fira Barcelona, the city's exhibition venue that houses Mobile World Congress, attributes the city's win to its experience with hosting large events, a commitment to driving investment in Catalonia, and a desire for Barcelona to be the center of all things mobile. "This is part of an effort to attract people to all of the Barcelona area," he told Netmic. "We want to be a living city lab for testing mobile technologies and how they shape our lives."
To get there, the GSMA, a global industry association that organizes the event, also designated Barcelona as the first Mobile World Capital. Though that sounds like something born out of a marketing focus group (which it probably was), Sedo says that it means that Barcelona's plans go far beyond the four days when the largest wireless trade show comes to town.

The new towers at the Fira Gran Via

Not surprisingly, attracting business to the area (the "Mobile World Hub") will be a prime effort, but at the public level, the city will open a year-round venue to showcase wireless technologies. Located in Barcelona's center on Placa de Catalunya, the Mobile World Centre will be something of a museum of mobile for tourists and residents.
Each summer, the city also will host the Mobile World Festival, a weeklong series of sports, entertainment, and cultural events that highlight mobile technologies while reflecting Barcelona's strong regional identity. Specific events will include Formula 1 racing, the Sitges Film Festival, FC Barcelona football club matches, and art exhibitions at the Picasso and Joan Miro museums.
Come each February, however, Mobile World Congress and the international spotlight it brings will be the focus. And starting next year, the show will move to a new venue, the Fira Gran Via . Finished last September, the new complex has 240,000 square meters of exhibition space across eight buildings. That's more than three times the available space at the show's previous venue, the Fira Montjuic.
Designed by Japanese architect Toyo Ito, the new buildings make bold and modern statements while lacking the historic charm and hillside terraces of the original location. Still, Sedo says that the twin towers in the new complex are Ito's interpretation of the Venetian Towers that stand at the entrance to Fira Montjuic.
Similarly, though the Fira Gran Via's location outside the city center may appear to be less inconvenient, Sedo says it will be easily accessible via Barcelona's commuter train network or a 10-minute drive from Placa d'Espanya and the Montjuic complex. What's more, it will best the other location by offering a direct connection to the airport.

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Verizon offers rural Americans a pricey 4G broadband alternative

Verizon is bringing broadband to rural America via its 4G LTE network, but the service's low data caps and high prices may still be out of reach for some consumers.
Verizon Wireless will soon offer its 4G LTE service to people who can't get wired broadband service. But the service won't come cheap. And there will be restrictions.

The company today introduced its HomeFusion Broadband service, which can deliver download speeds between 5 megabits per second to 12 Mbps and upload speeds up to 4 Mbps. The service is specifically intended for consumers living in places where DSL, cable modem, or fiber-to-the-home broadband services are not available.
The HomeFusion Broadband service will initially be available later this month in Birmingham, Ala., Dallas, and Nashville, Tenn. Verizon says it will add additional markets later.
When you look at the pricing and restrictions of the service, it's easy to see why the service would only appeal to those desperate for broadband.
Pricing for the HomeFusion service starts at $59.99 a month for 10 GB of data per month. Verizon also offers an $89.99 per month service with a limit of 20GB. And for $119.99, subscribers get 30GB of data for the month. Users also have to buy an antenna that is professionally installed on the outside of their home for $200.
By comparison Verizon charges $40 per month for a 3 Mbps DSL service. And it charges $55 a month for its 15 Mbps Fios broadband service, which also comes with a free Wi-Fi router.
Not only is the HomeFusion wireless broadband service more expensive than equivalent wired services offered by Verizon, it also comes with a pesky little data usage cap. This means that if the household exceeds 10GB, 20GB or 30GB of data per month, subscribers are charged an extra $10 per GB of data per month.
While these data usage caps may be more than enough for an individual smartphone or tablet subscriber, they are likely inadequate for an entire household that expects to do more than check e-mail each day.
According to Verizon's own data calculator, watching one hour of high-definition video per day uses more than 60GB per month. Streaming two hours of audio per day, uses more than 3.5 GB of data per month. And this usage is assuming there is only one person using the connection.
That said, the service can accommodate up to four wired connections and at least 20 devices via Wi-Fi, including laptops, tablets, gaming consoles, etc. But again, with these data caps, heavy broadband users would likely be paying an arm and leg for this service.
Instead, it seems that the caps make the HomeFusion service better suited for light Internet users. Of course, a truly light broadband user could subscribe to Verizon's much cheaper DSL service, which costs only $25 a month for speeds of 1.5 Mbps and no data caps.
The real issue here is the data caps. Verizon's LTE network service offers great speeds, but users are essentially penalized for using too much of that speed to access many of the services on the network. Meanwhile, no such data caps exist for any of Verizon's Fios and DSL packages. Subscribers of these services are able to use as much data as they like, streaming movies from Netflix or listening to streaming music services like Pandora. In fact, Verizon encourages unfettered usage as a differentiator from its cable rivals, who have recently begun talking about metering usage.
So why is Verizon restricting usage on its HomeFusion service? The answer is because HomeFusion uses Verizon's wireless 4G LTE network. This is the same network that Verizon uses to deliver wireless and Mi-Fi services for mobile devices. And because it's a wireless service, Verizon says it can't afford to offer unlimited usage. The company abandoned its unlimited smartphone data plans last year.
The problem is that wireless spectrum is a shared resource and its availability is limited. Unlike wired services, such as DSL and Fios, that provide a direct connection to a home with near limitless constraints on capacity, wireless services can become overwhelmed with traffic. And this degrades service for everyone on the network. To protect against heavy usage that might cripple the network, Verizon limits how much bandwidth is available to subscribers each month.
Why would anyone subscribe to this over-priced and limited service? That's a good question. The reason largely lies in the fact that in some places in the U.S. there are no wired broadband services. In 2008, only about 38 percent of rural American households had access to high-speed Internet connections, according to a study published by Pew Internet & American Life Project. This compared with about 57 percent of city dwellers who had access to broadband and 60 percent of people living in suburbs.
When Verizon first started building its 4G LTE network, the company said it would use the service to offer rural Americans broadband. The spectrum that the 4G LTE service uses is ideal for rural connectivity, because it propagates over longer distances and can penetrate walls and other obstacles.
It's unclear at this point whether rural consumers will buy the service or not. Perhaps they will if the only other alternatives are dial-up access or slow and expensive satellite broadband service. Hughes Network Systems, one of the largest satellite broadband service providers in the world, charges $100 for a 2 Mbps service with no data cap.
"It's a new product and we think there is a market for it," a Verizon spokeswoman said. "And we think people who have limited options will check it out. And the service will be competitive with other offerings."
One thing is clear: At these prices and with the data caps, Verizon doesn't have to worry about cannibalizing its DSL and Fios services.

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Nokia's 41-megapixel 808 PureView won't be coming to U.S.

Nokia says on the device's home page that it will be available across the globe--with the exception of North America.

Nokia's highly anticipated 808 PureView is getting a global release. The only issue: one continent will be left out.
According to the device's home page, the 808 PureView will not be made available to North America. It will, however, be available to customers in Europe and just about everywhere else around the world when it launches in May.
Nokia unveiled the Symbian-powered phone at Mobile World Congress this year. It includes a 1.3GHz processor and a 4-inch display. Its most appealing feature, however, is its camera, which packs a whopping 41 megapixels. The device, which will cost $605 before subsidies, also supports full HD 1080p video recording and Dolby Digital Plus for 5.1-channel surround sound playback.
Although having the 808 PureView in North America would have been nice, there's still hope. In an interview with Finland-based newspaper Aamulehti published last week, Nokia Executive Vice President Jo Harlow said that the 808 PureView's 41-megapixel camera sensor is on its way to Windows Phones. Harlow couldn't say when exactly, "but it will not take very long."

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Judge orders Google, Motorola to hand over Android data to Apple

The companies must turn over information about the development of Android, as well as information on their merger.

Apple will soon have far more information about Android and Google's Motorola Mobility acquisition than the search giant would like.
U.S. Circuit Court Judge Richard A. Posner yesterday ordered Motorola Mobility and its soon-to-be parent company Google to hand over development information about Android to Apple, according to Bloomberg, which obtained court documents. In addition, the judge said that Google must provide Apple with information about the company's $12.5 billion deal to acquire Motorola Mobility.
Apple has been asking for the data for quite some time in its battle against Motorola Mobility, which sells smartphones that use the Android OS.
And as one might expect, Google and Motorola Mobility have attempted to stop the sharing of any information with the iPhone maker. However, according to Bloomberg, the judge believed it was a key component in the "discovery" phase of the trial.
Apple and Motorola are locked in a bitter patent dispute in Posner's court over several patents. The first jury trial, which will examine whether Motorola violated six Apple patents, will commence on June 11. After that's completed, Posner will hold a second trial over whether Apple violates three Motorola patents.
That Google has found its way into the trial is notable. After announcing plans to acquire Motorola Mobility last year, Google made it clear that it wanted the mobile company's patents. What it might not have expected, however, was the possibility of getting tossed into existing cases by virtue of that acquisition. Motorola has argued in this case that Google should not be a party to the lawsuit because the mobile firm has no "possession, custody, or control" over Google.
Looking ahead, there's no telling what either Apple or Motorola is hoping to achieve with their lawsuits. In earlier rulings, neither side has been able to win a decisive victory, and in most cases, simple workarounds ensure products stay on store shelves. The chances of that changing this time around seem slim right now.

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Security experts see limited impact from LulzSec arrests

The arrests may have taken out the group known as "LulzSec," but there are still untold numbers of the hacktivist group Anonymous who remain active

For the last year, a group of hackers known as "LulzSec" had frequent occasion to taunt government pursuers as it published sensitive data purloined from myriad public and corporate Web sites. But the authorities may be close to dismantling the group that has proved such a thorn in their side.
Police on Tuesday charged five men in the U.K., Ireland, New York and Chicago with hacking-related offenses while announcing that their alleged LulzSec leader, known as Sabu, had entered a guilty plea August 15 to 12 counts of computer hacking conspiracies and other crimes. According to the U.S. Attorney's Office in New York, Hector Xavier Monsegur, 28, had been arrested and released in June on $50,000 bond. One of the men charged, Jake Davis, also known as Topiary, was arrested in the United Kingdom last July.
The alleged members of LulzSec are accused in computer attacks against Fox Broadcasting, Sony Pictures Entertainment, PBS, and global intelligence firm Stratfor. The group is accused of stealing confidential information--including passwords--and releasing it publicly, hijacking e-mail accounts and even secretly listening in on a conference call in which the FBI and Scotland Yard talked about trying to catch them. They allegedly operated under the names of "LulzSec," "Internet Feds" and "AntiSec," all offshoots of online activist collective Anonymous.
Officials quickly declared a victory over the arrested hackers but were reluctant to call it a major blow to the collective of hackers known as Anonymous. "It's not often you get a case involving more than one million victims," one official said at a news conference today held by the U.S. Attorney General's office.
But while LulzSec may be silenced--at least for now--network security experts believe that it's unlikely to spell the end of the spate of high-profile, politically motivated hacks carried out by the hacking group's brethren in Anonymous.
Josh Corman, director of security intelligence for Akamai who has been studying the hackers, said it was too soon to tell if this is going to hurt the Anonymous movement long term or help it.
"It may improve their operational security" to keep identities more hidden in case of infiltrators, he said.
Speaking with CNET on condition of anonymity, a member of Anonymous indeed downplayed the importance of the arrests.
"People get arrested from Anonymous all the time, including 25 last week," by Interpol. "It's not like these arrests will bring the entire group down. They were involved but they weren't kingpins like the FBI says."
In search of Sabu
Officials have declined to comment on a Fox report that Monsegur served as an informant after he was arrested, but there had been rumors that he was snitching. A hacker using the moniker "Virus" posted a chat log to Pastebin on August 16 between Sabu and others that Virus claims is proof that Sabu had snitched after he was tricked. "Be careful who you are friends with because they will sell you out very quickly," Virus warns.
Sabu dismissed those claims in a subsequent post in October, saying "Am I snitch/informant? Let's be real--I don't know any identities of anyone in my crew... And the last thing I'd ever do is take down my own people. I am a grown ass man I can handle my own issues," he wrote. "I've been to jail before--I don't fear it. In fact there is very little I am afraid of especially these days."
Monsegur, an unemployed father of two, would have had plenty of time to spend boasting of activities and dissing the feds via his Twitter account, "The Real Sabu." "The federal government is run by a bunch of [expletive] cowards. Don't give in to these people. Fight back. Stay strong," the account tweeted yesterday.
Sabu was so high profile and antagonistic that other hackers tried to uncover his identity last summer. In fact, a Pastebin post from last June named Monsegur as Sabu, so it could be that rival hackers did the leg work for the feds. Other chat logs that have been posted publicly revealed that Sabu was the leader. "He was the Pablo Escobar of the LulzSec team," famed hacker Kevin Mitnick said.
Monsegur is accused of being the "rooter," the hacker who identifies vulnerabilities in computer networks that can then be exploited. And despite officials referring to the group's "sophisticated hacking" skills, the group relied mostly on run-of-the-mill SQL injection and distributed denial-of-service (DDoS) attacks.
"They were pretty stupid about a lot of things," said Scot Terban, a security analyst and consultant. This included using a stolen credit card number to order car engines and having them delivered to his home address, logging into Internet Relay Chat with his real IP address instead of going through a proxy like TOR, and using aliases that could be linked to him on the Web from other activities, Terban said, referencing court documents.

Are these the tweets of an informant? The Twitter account of "The Real Sabu" had this to say yesterday. A final tweet overnight, ahead of arrests of alleged members of hacking group LulzSec, says in German: The revolution says I am, I was, I will be."
The real nasty hacking targeting feds may stop, at least for a while, Terban said. "In general I think it's going to break the back of the AntiSec mentality of going around and hacking things and dumping data," Terban said. "Now they've all learned that they can't necessarily just skate and get away with it."
Mitnick knows from first-hand experience just what hacker groups like Lulz and Anonymous are up against. One of the most celebrated early hackers, Mitnick got busted on hacking charges after leading the FBI on a goose chase about 25 years ago.
"If you poke the tiger, eventually the tiger is going to bite you," Mitnick said. "When you screw with law enforcement, they take it personal--and these guys were doing that, compromising police Web sites and publishing home addresses and phone numbers."
Recounting his personal chronology of being on the lam, Mitnick recalled that he kept his circle of acquaintances to one or two hacking partners at most, and he still wound up getting informed upon.
"The larger your circle the greater your risk...If I was a member of Anonymous, which I'm not, I would be really concerned about the same thing happening to me. How many people know my real world identity?"

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U.K. ISPs lose appeal, must pay legal fees of file-sharing suspects

A court of appeals in the U.K. says ISPs will need to pay 25 percent of costs associated with establishing and running an appeals body for alleged file sharers.

Under the United Kingdom's new Digital Economy Act, Internet service providers must pitch in on the legal costs incurred by people suspected of illegally sharing files on their network, an appeals court has ruled.
According to the Guardian, a U.K. court today ruled against an appeal brought by ISPs TalkTalk and BT. The companies, as well as their competitors, now must pay 25 percent of all "qualifying" costs related to establishing and operating an appeals body for alleged file sharers. Ofcom, a U.K.-based communications regulator, will pay the remaining 75 percent of the costs.
U.K. ISPs, which will also pay 25 percent of costs related to identifying alleged file sharers, received a single reprieve from the court: they won't need to pay case fees related to charges brought by the aforementioned appeals body.
Today's ruling now paves the way for the U.K.'s Digital Economy Act to be enforced across the country. The law, whose monetary ramifications have been under discussion for nearly two years, requires providers to disconnect subscribers from their broadband service, if they're found guilty of illegal file sharing. In 2009, the operating managers of all of the country's top ISPs spoke out against the bill. TalkTalk and BT were the last companies standing in its way--until today.
"Consumers must be presumed to be innocent unless proven guilty," a letter written in 2009 by the top executives at the U.K. ISPs read. "We must avoid an extrajudicial 'kangaroo court' process where evidence is not tested properly, and accused broadband users are denied the right to defend themselves against false accusations.
"Without these protections, innocent customers will suffer. Any penalty must be proportionate. Disconnecting users from the Internet would place serious limits on their freedom of expression."
Still, the bill pressed on, and it made its way through debates in both the House of Lords and the House of Commons in 2010.
Besides ultimately losing the appeals, TalkTalk and BT's legal challenges might have cost the companies well into the six figures, according to the Guardian. The justices ruled today that the ISPs must pay 93 percent of the costs associated with their appeals.

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