Techmeme: Smartphone Patents: The Never-Ending War (Wall Street Journal)

April 15, 2012, 8:25 PM

Top News

Ian Katz / Guardian:

Web freedom faces greatest threat ever, warns Google's Sergey Brin — Exclusive: Threats range from governments trying to control citizens to the rise of Facebook and Apple-style ‘walled gardens’ — The principles of openness and universal access that underpinned the creation …

More: Friending Facebook Blog, AJE, Pulse2 Technology …, The Next Web, CNET, The Wrap, The Raw Story and Beyond Search. Tweets: @ajkeen

Charlie Stross / Charlie's Diary:

What Amazon's ebook strategy means — It seems to me that a lot of folks in the previous discussion don't really understand quite what makes Amazon so interesting—and threatening, for that matter—to the publishing industry. — So I'm going to take a stab at explaining.

More: Pulse2 Technology …, Beyond Search, Jeff Jarvis, Forbes, Wired and TechCrunch

Tweets: @codinghorror, @aweissman and @hfiguiere

New York Times:

Instagram Founders Were Helped by Bay Area Connections — SAN FRANCISCO — Past midnight, in a dimly lighted warehouse jutting into the San Francisco Bay, Kevin Systrom and Mike Krieger introduced something they had been working on for weeks: a photo-sharing iPhone application called Instagram.

More: Pulse2 Technology …, MacStories, Friending Facebook Blog, VentureBeat, Android Phone Fans, The Verge, VentureBeat, Business Insider and MacNN

Tweets: @cdixon, @eldon, @pkafka, @jonathanwald and @hunterwalk

Matt Brian / The Next Web:

Twitter Wanted to Buy Instagram, But Facebook Beat it to it

More: Business Insider. Tweets: @davezatz

Danny Sullivan / Marketing Land:

FCC Clears Google Over Wifi Eavesdropping But Fines It $25,000 For “Noncompliance” With Requests — The US Federal Communications Commission has cleared Google of any legal wrong-doing over its Street View cars that intercepted wifi transmissions. That's the good news for the company. The bad news?

More: Digital Trends, New York Times, Gizmodo, Pulse2 Technology …, Computerworld, Business Insider and SlashGear

Amy Schatz / Wall Street Journal:

FCC Proposes $25,000 Fine on Google — WASHINGTON—The Federal Communications Commission proposed a $25,000 fine on Google Inc., accusing the search giant of deliberately obstructing an investigation into whether the company violated federal rules when its street-mapping service collected …

More: The Hill, Reuters, TechCrunch, Geekosystem, Between the Lines Blog and Bits

Todd Bishop / GeekWire:

How former Microsoft tech chief Nathan Myhrvold could have created the iPhone — Myhrvold's ‘consumer computer’ vision in 1991, as published by Men's Journal. — Nathan Myhrvold is back in the national spotlight again, but in a very different way this time. — Myhrvold in his chef's garb

More: Men's Journal, Pulse2 Technology …, The Verge, Neowin and Slashdot

Keith Teare / TechCrunch:

The Mobile Paradox — Google's stock declined by over 4% yesterday. Many have put this down to the company's decision to create a non-voting class of stock as part of a control-retention exercise as the founders sell shares. But more is going on here. In the same week as Facebook acquired Instagram …

More: Pulse2 Technology …. Tweets: @gaborfari, @carnage4life and @theromit

Wall Street Journal:

Smartphone Patents: The Never-Ending War — Even Minor Features Figure in Big Battles as Rivalry Heats Up — Customers shopping for Apple Inc.'s iPhone might pay little attention to the gadget's “slide to unlock” feature, but you would never know that from a quick glance at Apple's current roster of patent lawsuits.

More: Real-Time Advice and Washington Post. Thanks:@jimprosser

Dante D'Orazio / The Verge:

Steve Jobs movie starring Ashton Kutcher to cover Apple from 1971 to 2000, filming starts next month — We've got a few more details on the recently-revealed Steve Jobs movie starring Ashton Kutcher, thanks to a Neowin interview with the producer, Mark Hulme.

More: Pulse2 Technology …, TUAW, App Advice, AppleInsider, VentureBeat, Mashable!, CNET, iClarified, Redmond Pie, Business Insider, Gizmodo, MacNN and Neowin

Jason Calacanis / LAUNCH:

The One Product That Makes Apple a Trillion-Dollar Company Overnight — Apple will become a trillion-dollar company based not on iPads and Apple TV, but payments. — Imagine taking out your iPhone and instead of buying Angry Birds you bought the latest Groupon.

Tweets: @tcarmody. Thanks:@jason

Hiroko Tabuchi / New York Times:

How the Tech Parade Passed Sony By — THE lights dimmed. The crowd hushed. The teleprompters flickered. — Kazuo Hirai stepped up and flashed a winning smile: it was show time. The scene was oddly upbeat inside the Sony Corporation last Thursday as Mr. Hirai, the company's new chief executive, faced the cameras.

Frederic Lardinois / TechCrunch:

Google Finally Gets Right To Gmail Trademark In Germany — When Google launched Gmail in Germany in 2005, it was quickly barred from using the Gmail name for its email product there. German entrepreneur Daniel Giersch, after all, had registered the ‘G-mail’ trademark (short for Giersch mail) …

More: imediamonkey and GMANetwork.com. Thanks:@fredericl

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