LG was among 25 companies sued last week on patent infringement allegation by SanDisk in three cases. Two suits were filed in the U.S. District Court in Madison, Wis., and a complaint was filed with the U.S. International Trade Commission -- all accusing the companies of infringing on various SanDisk system-level patents. In the Wisconsin suits, SanDisk said it was seeking damages and a permanent injunction. It sought a permanent exclusion order from the ITC banning importation of the infringing products into the U.S. The actions “demonstrate SanDisk’s long-term commitment to enforcing its patents, both to protect our investment in research and development by obtaining a fair return on that investment, and out of fairness to third-parties that participate in our patent licensing program,” said Earle Thompson, SanDisk’s chief intellectual property counsel. “The goal is to resolve these matters by offering the defendants the opportunity to participate in our patent licensing program for card and system technology,” he said, adding that his company will otherwise “aggressively pursue these actions, seeking a prompt judicial resolution awarding damages, obtaining injunctive relief and banning importation of infringing product.” LG, named in the ITC complaint and one of the Wisconsin suits, declined to comment. A spokesman for Kingston, named in all three complaints, said his company “will vigorously defend its own rights and products.” But he declined to comment specifically on SanDisk’s actions, saying “on the advice of Kingston’s attorneys, we will not comment on pending litigation matters.”
Analysts bombarded Broadcom officials with questions about spending in a third quarter conference call after the company said Q3 profits had sunk 75 percent from a year earlier. Net income plunged to $27.8 million after the chip maker spent $352.3 million on research and development, almost $80 million more than it did in 2006. But strong Bluetooth, wireless LAN and DTV businesses drove company revenue to $950 million, up 5.2 percent from last year, it said late Tuesday.
A major prerelease music Web site was shut down and its alleged operator arrested in a raid by British and Dutch police, after a two-year investigation by the International Federation of the Phonographic Industry and the affiliated British Phonographic Industry organization, the groups said. The members-only OiNK group carried 60 major albums this year before their commercial release, making it the largest source of prerelease music, the trade groups said. The site had about 180,000 members, who had to qualify by proving they had access to prerelease music to upload, and it accepted donations using PayPal. A 24-year-old man from Middlesbrough, U.K. was arrested in connection with the site, and servers in Amsterdam were seized, the IFPI and BPI said. “This was not a case of friends sharing music for pleasure,” said Jeremy Banks, IFPI’s head of Internet antipiracy. BPI CEO Geoff Taylor said the work that went into creating OiNK can’t be replaced by ordinary file-sharers using BitTorrent: “Make no mistake, this operation will cause major disruption to this illegal activity.”
House members marched a slew of online child protection bills past the House Judiciary Committee Wednesday, after hearing a first-hand account by a teenager abducted and abused by a man she met online. The bills would increase fines and prison sentences for violators.
U.S. Customs and Border Protection has issued its weekly tariff rate quota and tariff preference level commodity report as of October 15, 2007. This report includes TRQs on various products such as beef, sugar, dairy products, peanuts, cotton, cocoa products, tobacco, certain BFTA, DR-CAFTA, Israel FTA, JFTA, MFTA, SFTA, UAFTA (AFTA) and UCFTA (Chile FTA) non-textile TRQs, etc. Each report also includes the AGOA, ATPDEA, BFTA, DR-CAFTA, CBTPA, Haitian HOPE, MFTA, NAFTA, SFTA, and UCFTA TPLs and TRQs for qualifying apparel and/or other textile articles, the TRQs on worsted wool fabrics, etc. (CBP's weekly TRQ/TPL commodity report, dated 10/15/07, available at http://www.cbp.gov/linkhandler/cgov/import/textiles_and_quotas/commodity/cr071015.ctt/cr071015.doc.)
“There’s no time pressure” on the FCC to address an International Telecommunications Satellite Organization (ITSO) request to change Intelsat’s original licenses to reflect its obligations to maintain lifeline connectivity to developing countries, said David Gross, U.S. State Department coordinator for international communications and information policy. Gross and Richard Russell, the head of the U.S. delegation to the coming World Radiocommunication Conference in Geneva, spoke Thursday at a meeting of the State Department’s Advisory Committee on International Communications and Information Policy. Russell briefed the committee on the conference; Gross reported on State’s discussions with Vietnam and Mexico.
The U.S. Council for International Business has issued a press release announcing that Pakistan joined the ATA Carnet system as of October 1, 2007. ATA Carnets, which permit the temporary duty-free and tax-free import of goods, are an increasingly important tool for businesses engaged in international commerce. (USCIB, dated 10/02/07, available at http://www.uscib.org/index.asp?documentID=3747)
NCTA slammed the FCC for treating Bells differently from cable operators in a March order giving new video entrants a streamlined franchise approval process and capping some fees cities charge them. The trade group’s comments came in a petition to 6th U.S. Appeals Court in Cincinnati in Alliance for Community Media v. FCC. Five municipal groups and a dozen-plus cities also filed petitions, saying the FCC has no standing to intervene in local decision-making. The NCTA likewise said Thursday that the Communications Act limits FCC oversight of franchising. The Act names courts the sole arbiter of whether a city unreasonably refused to let a company sell TV, said NCTA. The briefs responded to Sept. comments to the court by the FCC, USTA and other franchise rule backers (CD Sept 19 p10).
NBC Universal CEO Jeff Zucker used a form of peer pressure to encourage unspecified hold-out companies to adopt existing technology to protect network content from unauthorized viewing and distribution on the Internet and through home networks. Speaking Wednesday at the U.S. Chamber of Commerce Anti-Counterfeiting and Piracy Summit, Zucker’s remarks clearly were aimed mostly at Google’s YouTube. Unlike Microsoft and MySpace, it hasn’t adopted long-promised antipiracy technology to block unauthorized videos. But he said he hopes that in the next few months the largest Internet service providers and home networking and device makers will adopt filtering technology, which AT&T has said it’s working on.
Viacom was “reluctantly drawn” to sue Google’s YouTube, but won’t shirk regulatory and legislative battles involving copyright, including net neutrality, CEO Philippe Dauman made clear Monday. In a keynote to the U.S. Chamber of Commerce Anti-Counterfeiting and Piracy Summit, Dauman said Viacom’s rising revenue from digital content, pegged at $500 million this year, was besieged by free online alternatives that made its licensed partners reconsider whether to keep paying.