On October 22, 2009, a House Homeland Security Committee Subcommittee1 held a hearing entitled "Cargo Security at Land Ports of Entry: Are We Meeting the Challenge?"
After a two-month lull in new trademark-infringement lawsuits over Google’s keyword-advertising practices, which ramped up in 2009 (WID Aug 5 p6), another suit has landed, this time in the U.S. District Court in Sacramento. Daniel Jurin, inventor of a form of “stucco and cement coated window and door trim” he calls Styrotrim, said Google’s recommendation of his trademark to competitors through its “suggestion tool” and sale of the trademark as a keyword constitutes infringement. Google has “facilitated the dilution of plaintiff’s customer base and diverted customers and traffic that rightfully is plaintiff’s, and plaintiff’s alone,” said the complaint. “In a sense, it’s a form of bait and switch advertising.” Jurin said Google’s labeling of its “sponsored link” section is deceptive and should be labeled “paid-for-placements” or a similar wording that conveys to users they aren’t organic search results. “In many cases, the link to the competitor’s website will appear higher and more conspicuously than the link for Plaintiff’s website.” Jurin asked the court to require “an accounting of all revenue earned by Google” connected to the sale of “Styrotrim” as a keyword, and the payment of that revenue or a percentage of it to Jurin. He also wants actual damages times three or statutory damages of $500 or more per infringing use, plus punitive damages. The European Court of Justice advocate general recently said in a nonbinding opinion that keyword sales weren’t infringement (WID Sept 23 p1).
Sumner Redstone’s company that controls Viacom may not need to sell the cable programmer’s Paramount movie studio because the holding company appears likely to pay back its loans with other deals, an analyst wrote Thursday. The holding company, National Amusements, sold all its voting shares in Viacom (CD Oct 15 p15) and may get about $420 million for selling land under properties that NAI owns, said Jason Bazinet of Citigroup. A Viacom spokesman declined to comment.
"Daily Update on Capitol Hill Trade Actions" is a regular feature of International Trade
Bernstein Research estimated that there were 909,000 postpaid net additions for Verizon Q3 and just more than 1 million total net additions. The research firm estimated that AT&T will add almost 1.35 million postpaid wireless subscribers because of the iPhone and nearly 1.5 million total subscribers. It’s “entirely conceivable” that the iPhone will turn out to have accounted for more than 100 percent of the U.S. industry’s postpaid subscriber growth in the quarter, Bernstein said. Verizon’s relative success rests heavily on continued weakness at Sprint and T-Mobile, it said. Verizon continued to push BlackBerry devices assertively Q3, with a combination of buy-one-get-one offers and handsets priced at $50, Bernstein said. Consumer access- line losses should “persist at painfully familiar rates,” it said, projecting that AT&T will shed 944,000 lines and Verizon 639,000. Net additions for AT&T’s U-verse and Verizon’s FiOS should be relative bright spots, it said. AT&T isn’t as far along the trend in access-line losses as Verizon, so its cost structure is more flexible than its competitors, Bernstein said. Over time, however, AT&T margins in wireline will be under severe strain, it said. Verizon may have provided a clue about the state of its presumed efforts to land a CDMA version of the iPhone for its network when it recently started airing “iDon’t” ads bashing the device, Bernstein said.
On September 29, 2009, the United Nations Environment Program released its report, titled Climate Change Science Compendium 20091, in preparation for the next UN climate convention meeting that will take place in Copenhagen in December.
RCN said it agreed to carry Chicago Land TV, a news channel, on its cable systems in the market. Terms weren’t disclosed.
On October 13, 2009, House and Senate conferees filed the conference report for H.R. 2892, the fiscal year (FY) 2010 appropriations bill for the Department of Homeland Security, including U.S. Customs and Border Protection, Immigration and Customs Enforcement, the Transportation Security Administration, etc.
After years of promise and many false starts, satellite- based phones and broadband services are poised to gain subscribers because of ever-faster connection speeds, speakers said at the Content and Communication World (CCW) conference in New York. With Viasat’s proposed acquisition of hardware customer and broadband service provider WildBlue and TerreStar preparing to launch its Genius smartphone with AT&T Mobility in Q1, the satellite industry is aiming to take a piece of the market from terrestrial-based rivals, they said.
After years of promise and many false starts, satellite- based phones and broadband services are poised to gain subscribers because of ever-faster connection speeds, industry officials said on Wednesday at the Content and Communication World (CCW) conference in New York.