Posts Tagged: "Internet"

Territoriality has been a difficult aspect of public international law to apply to the Internet and information technology sectors. It’s a central aspect of the current flap between Google and CNIL, which wants Google to remove listings purged under the right to be forgotten from its main Google.com domain, which Google sees as its American property. Another issue discussed at the conference include the need to finalize safe harbor privacy principles which would establish rules for U.S. or European Union businesses which store customer data, bridging the gap between differences in data privacy standards in the two jurisdictions.

Since the inception of the search engine, trademark owners, advertisers, search engine providers, and the courts have struggled with the issue of the use of third-party trademarks in keyword advertising and search returns, and whether such trademark use is likely to confuse consumers when they are searching for information regarding a particular brand. Despite an array of holdings on this issue over the years, following the 2011 decision in Network Automation, Inc. v. Advanced System Concepts, Inc., the Ninth Circuit and other courts have generally held that the potential for “mere diversion” of a consumer caused by the use of a third party’s trademark in connection with sponsored keywords or search results does not constitute trademark infringement unless a trademark owner can demonstrate that particular search returns or sponsored keyword advertisements are likely to cause confusion based on the specific use or presentation of a trademark in a search return.

In June, authorities in France served a formal notice to Google that it must delete certain links from it’s Google.com domain on a legal basis known as ‘the right to be forgotten.’ The right to be forgotten is implicated when an individual contacts a search engine company, such as Google, asking for a search result to be de-listed, essentially taking it out of their available search results. The provider assesses whether the privacy issue at stake has enough merit to de-list the link. If they don’t, the individual then has another avenue to take with a regulatory agency which may overturn the search engine provider’s decision.

Priceline has battled back from the dot-com bubble bursting to become the strongest selling stock on the S&P 500 with a market cap of about $66.8 billion. A number of the patents recently issued to Priceline Group companies protect technologies that make it easier to find the travel accommodations people need to enjoy their vacations or pursue their business needs. For example, more accurate search engine results for engines that have to navigate massive datasets to return suggestions to a user is the focus of U.S. Patent No. 8972434, entitled Multi-Phase Search and Presentation for Vertical Search Websites. This patent, assigned to Kayak, discloses a computer program product storing code executable to operate a travel reservation search engine with a query interface module to receive a user search input with a constraint, a constraint evaluation module that can generate queries configured to obtain fewer search results or achieve a quicker response time, and a website query module that executes the multiple queries.

One service available to help IoT device developers more easily create the real-time operating system (RTOS) necessary to run applications on a smart device is SynthOS. Developed by Zeidman Technologies of Cupertino, CA, SynthOS is an automated generator of RTOS code which uses patented algorithms which lets users input functionality at an abstract level. SynthOS enables a user to develop a customized RTOS which is compatible with ANSI C language standards. After a SynthOS user inputs generalized, abstracted functionality, the service can then automatically generate OS code, including mutexes, mailboxes and semaphores and any other mechanisms for communication or synchronization. Soon, Zeidman Technologies will be announcing an agreement reached with a major Silicon Valley semiconductor company regarding the SynthOS technology.

Honeywell has its sights set squarely on airport innovation. For example, U.S. Patent Application No. 20150194060, titled Enhanced Awareness of Obstacle Proximity, would protect a method of determining the location of an obstacle relative to an aircraft and generating a graphical user interface based on the obstacle’s location which indicates the area associated with the obstacle. Much like the taxiway traffic alerting technology included in the patents above, this innovation is intended to improve upon current surveillance systems for ensuring that collisions don’t happen between aircraft and other objects on the ground.

The two largest patent portfolios related to BLE technologies are owned by Irvine, CA-based fabless semiconductor company Broadcom and South Korean electronics giant Samsung. A market map view of the top innovators in the BLE space shows that not only does Broadcom have a slightly larger portfolio than Samsung, it has also dealt with far less litigation than the South Korean developer. The large collection of companies clustering in the lower-left quadrant of this market map represent companies with smaller patent portfolios and lower revenues. The dozens of companies dotting this portion of the map could be an indication that mergers and acquisitions in the IoT semiconductor chip space may be far from over this year.

IPv6 offers several benefits besides plenty of new IP addresses preventing device owners from having to share IP addresses. Effectively managed IPv6 networks can reduce the amount of information stored on network devices for routing packets to a destination, improving network performance. Hosts can generate their own IP addresses instead of waiting for a manual input from network administrators. IPv6 adoption also ends the need to use network address translation techniques for remapping an IP address space, which became necessary with the exhaustion of addresses in IPv4.

The patent portfolio discloses systems and methods involving a secure credit card with onboard biometric fingerprint capabilities, RFID, and display that can be powered either by ambient light, backlight from a point-of-sale terminal or mobile device, RFID coupling, smart IC contact, or battery. Card information is transmitted to the terminal and receives a secure validation code after which some combination of a card validation and/or biometric-based user validation code are generated and transmitted back to the point of validation. By decoupling authorization of the fingerprint image and the user’s personal information, transmission and data vulnerabilities within the existing payment card system are addressed while consumer behavior remains unchanged.

The nature of broadband has been changing in a way that Wheeler believes will spur even more robust data services in the near future. The FCC is taking a number of steps to try and promote competition among broadband service providers, one of the most highly anticipated of which is the incentive auction of broadcast television airwave spectrum which is currently scheduled for the first quarter of 2016. The auction is an attempt to purchase spectrum from TV broadcasters so that it can be resold in a later auction to wireless service providers.

At a minimum, two-factor authentication rather than a single password, should be used to protect most types of confidential data. With two-factor authentication, the user is required to use two of the following three forms of identification – something they know (password or PIN), something they possess (a token or USB stick) or a physical characteristic of the user (finger swipe) in order to gain access to the data. For more sensitive data, a multi-factor approach offers an even higher degree of security. In multi-factor authentication, a user must use three or more forms of identification. For example, in addition to a password and a token, users are required to answer one or more custom questions, known only to the user.

The price index of personal computing has dropped by greater than 40 percent since 2007; during that time, the average consumer price index rose by about 10 percent. Computer software and wireless telephone technologies have also seen price index reductions. although theirs are much less substantial. Interestingly, the only area of tech related to the digital age where the price index hasn’t fallen in those years is Internet bandwidth provided by Internet service providers.

The USPTO has also created an increasingly sophisticated cyber security defense system to protect the nation’s patents and related information. In this multi-layered system, the USPTO guards against virtually every possible type of intrusion, protecting their systems against a multitude of potential denizens, from lone wolf to suspected nation-state Advanced Persistent Threat (APT) attackers. Compared to the USPTO, or even corporations, most law firms are easy targets and the client IP on their networks is low hanging fruit that is all too easily harvested. Too many law firms still view ‘reasonable’ security as signature-based (passwords) access and malware protection, like McAfee, as good enough. Today, it is not nearly enough.

Amazon (NASDAQ:AMZN) has just cleared up the picture over its cloud computing business, Amazon Web Services (AWS) and the company’s forecast looks sunny. The corporation recently announced its first quarter earnings for 2015 and financial pundits were flabbergasted to see just how profitable AWS has been for Amazon, earning $5.16 billion in revenue over a recent 12-month period and growing…

The court ruled that the relevance of her photographs greatly outweighed Nucci’s minimal privacy interest. Nucci argued that she had a legitimate expectation of privacy in her photographs since her Facebook profile was set to “private.” However, the court was not convinced and explained that photographs posted on a social media site are neither privileged nor protected by any right of privacy, regardless of the privacy settings established by the user. After all, the court pointed out that the very nature of these social media sites is to share photographs with others, so a user cannot later claim a legitimate expectation of privacy.