On strong sales of its “infotainment” systems to automakers, Harman International reported first-quarter net income improved to $53.9 million from $33.6 million as revenue jumped to $754.6 million from $691.7 million. Sales to automakers increased 5.2% from a year ago to $520.3 million, but were down from $571.3 million in the 4th quarter, company officials said. The quarter-to- quarter downturn in automotive revenue was tied to a decrease in sales to Chrysler, company officials said. CE sales jumped 30.5% to $111.4 million and were up from $105.2 million in the 4th quarter. In the professional business, revenue rose 9.9% to $123 million, but were down from $131.6 million in the 4th quarter. Overall gross margins improved to 35.3% from 32% a year earlier due largely to strong sales of Harman’s JBL brand OnStage and OnTour speaker products for Apple’s iPod. It also benefitted from initial sales of the Drive + Play iPod docking station designed for car use. Those product helped boost Harman’s CE margins to 35% from 26% a year earlier. Harman’s new agreement to supply infotainment system for Mercedes S-Class vehicles produced $4 million in incremental revenue during the quarter and is forecast to produce an additional $100 million for the fiscal year, CFO Kevin Brown said. Harman also landed a new agreement to supply infotainment systems for Peugeot vehicles from the entry level through “several levels of the high-end,” Exec. Chmn. Sidney Harman told analysts in an earnings conference call. Harman declined to release a sales forecast for the Peugeot deal. The company also formed a joint venture with S. Korean navigation software developer Mavis. Harman has a controlling stake in the venture, which Sidney Harman described as a “relatively modest investment” in declining to release further details.
U.S. Customs and Border Protection (CBP) has posted to its Web site a report for the trade regarding the Automated Commercial Environment (ACE)/International Trade Data System (ITDS) standard data set (SDS) which CBP presented to the Trade Support Network (TSN) during its September 26-29, 2005 meeting.
Cablevision’s request to dismiss a lawsuit by the N.Y. Jets was rejected in part, the team said. U.S. Dist. Judge Harold Baer, N.Y.C., rejected all but one of the cable operator’s bids to block claims. An Aug. trial is scheduled to hear the Jets’ claims that Cablevision violated antitrust law by blocking a proposed sports and convention center in N.Y.C. which might have competed with the firm’s Madison Square Garden, the team said. “The West Side stadium matter was resolved in June,” Cablevision said in a statement. N.Y.’s Metropolitan Transportation Authority “has taken the land back from the Jets,” the firm said.
The Supreme Court’s Kelo v. New London ruling had broad implications for both physical and intellectual property (IP), Progress & Freedom Foundation’s Jim DeLong told a House subcommittee on trade and consumer protection. He said the high court and Congress need to reject a distinction between personal and property rights. The Supreme Court’s June decision gave local govt. authority to take private land by eminent domain and give it to developers. While the Kelo ruling caused a public uproar, there’s a long history of misuse of eminent domain and regulatory power grabs, DeLong said. He said the Supreme Court has effectively removed itself from judging what a state determines to be a legitimate public use and is “willing to accept as a ‘public use’ anything that claims an economic development rationale.” Thus, the Kelo decision was not unexpected. As property rights horror stories go, Kelo is 2nd rank, he told lawmakers. DeLong said he viewed the strong public response to Kelo as evidence of the public’s willingness to let the market determine land use. He said the public’s increased focus on IP rights, in the wake of high-profile online piracy cases, was also identified as a factor in the public outcry against the Kelo decision. With his testimony, DeLong entered into the record a paper he wrote that draws a direct connection between real and IP rights. A bill (HR-1201) pending before Congress would take property “from a bunch of A’s and give it to a bunch of B’s, only without paying a cent to the A’s. And it, too, relies on a test composed of sanctimonious verbiage that could be failed only by the deeply stupid,” he said in the paper. The Digital Millennium Copyright Act made it illegal to crack encryption measures and distribute code cracking tools but HR-1201 would “repeal this ban insofar as the code cracker or the toolsmith wanted to obtain, or help others obtain, access for purposes of making ‘noninfringing use’ of a work.” DeLong said there are many noninfringing uses of copyrighted works and most are created by the courts under the “grab bag” known as the fair use doctrine. Once the tools are available, or the decrypted copies are available, then there is no way of controlling them, he said. The IP involved has then been “seized from all the As who used to own it and redistributed to all the Bs.”
A federal appeals court affirmed a lower court denial of class-action status to a telecom right-of-way suit against Entergy Corp. by Tex., La. and Miss. landowners. The 5th U.S. Appeals Court, New Orleans, was ruling on a case (04-41113) in which the landowners claimed Entergy violated electric transmission easement agreements by leasing spare capacity on its fiber corporate network to 3rd-party telecom carriers. The appeals court agreed with the lower court’s ruling that the plaintiffs failed to show prosecution of individual suits would impose incompatible standards of conduct on the parties. It said at worst, Entergy might be found liable to some landowners but not others, forcing it to negotiate with the victors for the right to keep transmitting telecom services through their property. The court also said that because land and easement values vary widely, there’s no way to have a fair proxy formula for calculating damages owed to class members.
Telenor Satellite Services and Stratos, both Mobile Satellite Services (MSS) resellers, reported annual E-911 call numbers for the E-911 docket (94-102). Telnor said it fielded 9 emergency calls since Feb., 4 of which were wrong numbers and 5 of which were test calls. Stratos said it received 10 emergency calls from land-based Inmarsat customers since this Feb., none of which required forwarding to the appropriate Public Safety Answering Point (PSAP).
Iomega, which rose to fame on the success of its Zip drives, is undergoing another round of restructuring that eliminates 126 jobs and trims several product lines to focus on hard drive-based products.
JibJab Media’s wags are at it again, with a satirical film shown Thurs. on MSN Video and JibJab.com after a world premiere on The Tonight Show with Jay Leno. Big Box Mart lampoons megasized retail chains. Microsoft and JibJab have partnered to launch the next 5 new animated shorts on both MSN Video and JibJab.com. MSN and JibJab at collaborating to aid MSN advertisers who want to ally their brands with JibJab’s output. MSN will sell traditional TV ad units next to the JibJab films, the first such ad deal in which MSN will sell ads on a site outside the MSN network. MSN secured rights to show previous JibJab films, including the classic 2004 campaign parodies This Land and Second Term.
SEC promotes Luis Mejia to chief litigation counsel, Div. of Enforcement… Peter Cohen of Ramius Capital Group joins L-3 Communications board… American Public Communications Council adds Donald Goens, FSH Communications, to its board… Jason Land, ex-Strategic TV Inc., moves to VISTA Satellite Communications as vp- global services… New board members at Affordable Telecommunications: Sutida Suwunnavid, chmn.; Sean Lee, CEO; Kornchaya Manchanda, CFO… Lifetime promotes Renee Presser to vp-standards & practices; Louise Bryson adds role of gen. mgr., Lifetime Movie Network.
New GPS systems, plus Europe’s Galileo equivalent slated to launch in 2008, will permit tighter vertical and horizontal separation between planes, a new ABI Research study said Tues. That means satellite-based navigation systems for aviation and marine markets will be on the rise, as aircraft and vessels crowd air and sea lanes, the report said. ABI analysts said new GPS systems’ enhanced graphical capability, rather than improved accuracy, is driving their adoption, predicting the future will see removable GPS units that can be transferred between boats and cars. The commercial aircraft market and the recreational boat market -- of around 8,000 planes and 17 million vessels -- pale beside the 230 million vehicles on U.S. roads that offer a market for land-based navigation, said ABI.