Techmeme: Why patent trolls will laugh in the face of the US government's weak attempts to fight them (Christopher Mims/Quartz)

Open Links In New Tab

Mobile Archives Advertise Site News Contact Editors

June 5, 2013, 12:20 PM

Top News

The White House:

Fact Sheet: White House Task Force on High-Tech Patent Issues — Today the White House announced major steps to improve incentives for future innovation in high tech patents, a key driver of economic growth and good paying American jobs. The White House issued five executive actions …

More: Electronic Frontier Foundation, FOSS Patents, eWeek, Guardian, Forbes, Examiner, Fortune, Engine.is, ConsortiumInfo.org …, White House.gov Blog, Businessweek, www.idigitaltimes.co.uk, TWICE, Gizmodo and CNET

Christopher Mims / Quartz:

Why patent trolls will laugh in the face of the US government's weak attempts to fight them — The White House today introduced an executive order intended to combat “patent trolling,” in which companies buy up patents and use them to sue “infringing” companies that actually make things.

Edward Wyatt / New York Times:

Obama Orders Regulators to Root Out ‘Patent Trolls’ — WASHINGTON — One company threatened to sue 8,000 coffee shops, hotels and retailers for patent infringement because they had set up Wi-Fi networks for their customers. Another claimed that hundreds of small businesses were violating …

Joe Mullin / Ars Technica:

Obama administration comes out swinging against patent trolls

Ashby Jones / Wall Street Journal:

Tech Firms Back Obama Patent Move

More: iDownloadBlog.com

Chris Schneider / The Microsoft Office Blog:

Outlook 2013 RT Coming to Windows RT Tablets as part of Windows 8.1 Update — Today at Computex 2013, Tami Reller, CFO and CMO of Microsoft's Windows Division, announced that Outlook 2013 RT will be available on Windows RT tablets as part of the free Windows 8.1 update coming later this year.

Tom Warren / The Verge:

‘Small’ Windows 8 tablets will ship with a free version of Office 2013 — Microsoft has revealed that future 7- and 8-inch Windows 8 tablets will ship with a free copy of Office 2013. Speaking at Computex on Wednesday, Windows CFO Tami Reller revealed plans for Office Home and Student 2013 …

More: Engadget, BetaNews, AllThingsD, CNET, BGR and 9to5Google

James Trew / Engadget:

HTC One ‘mini’ leaks showing 4.3-inch 720p display and UltraPixel camera — HTC One mini? HTC M4? Whichever moniker you want to give it, that appears to be what we see above. Shown in a bunch of photos on Estonian site forte.delfi.ee the 4.3-inch device seems to corroborate much of what we've heard already.

Ryan Lawler / TechCrunch:

Bloomberg Launches Bloomberg Beta, A $75 Million Early-Stage Investment Fund Led By Former IGN Exec Roy Bahat — Media company Bloomberg is launching its own venture capital fund, called Bloomberg Beta today. With the fund, the company is putting aside $75 million to invest in early-stage startups.

More: Venture Capital Dispatch, Betabeat, AllThingsD, Poynter, CNET, New York Times, PandoDaily, ventureburn and Forbes. See also Mediagazer

Jeff Blagdon / The Verge:

Samsung Galaxy S4 Active offers a more rugged, waterproof variant of Android bestseller — Today, Samsung is announcing a new variant of its Galaxy S4 more suited to the great outdoors. The phone has a high degree of dust and water protection (IP67), allowing it to be submerged in water up to a meter …

Alistair Barr / Reuters:

EBay to open ‘shoppable windows’ in New York — (Reuters) - EBay Inc is launching virtual stores called “shoppable windows” this month that the e-commerce company hopes will help retailers generate more sales from their existing physical store networks. — The first four of these screens …

More: Betabeat, eBay Inc, CNET, Engadget, TechCrunch, The Verge and WebProNews

Frederic Lardinois / TechCrunch:

Pandora Launches New HTML5-Based TV Experience, Starting With Xbox 360 and PS3 — Pandora today launched a new browser-based interface for TVs that it hopes will help set the standard for using the service in the living room. The first devices to support this new HTML5-based interface …

More: Pandora Blog, CNET, GigaOM, TechHive, BetaNews, VentureBeat, The Next Web, Engadget, The Verge, Ubergizmo, Evolver.fm, Lifehacker, SlashGear and WebProNews

Gerry Smith / The Huffington Post:

Apple, Samsung Face Grilling Over Stolen Smartphone Epidemic — New York Attorney General Eric Schneiderman has summoned representatives of the four largest smartphone makers to a summit next week where he plans to press them on their failure to address soaring thefts of their products.

More: Betabeat, NY Daily News, Cult of Mac and iDownloadBlog.com. Thanks:@gerryfsmith

Ina Fried / AllThingsD:

FreedomPop Expands Its Free Service to Voice — While there are lots of discount cellphone plans out there, alternative carrier FreedomPop is trying to introduce a new price tier — free. — This summer, the company plans to offer a plan with various Android phones that gives customers …

More: PC Magazine, Mashable, SiliconANGLE, Forbes, GigaOM, CNET, Engadget, The Verge, DSLreports, TUAW, socalTECH.com, FierceWireless, SlashGear, PhoneArena and VentureBeat

Brooke Crothers / CNET:

Intel's ‘Thunderbolt 2’ official, coming later this year — Intel's next Thunderbolt technology — hitherto known by the code name Falcon Ridge — now has an official moniker. The tech is slated to be built into future Intel chipsets. — Intel has officially dubbed the next version of its high-speed port “Thunderbolt 2.”

More: Technology@Intel, AppleInsider, The Register, iMore, SlashGear, Engadget, Ubergizmo, Cult of Mac and Gizmodo

Barry Schwartz / Search Engine Land:

Yahoo Officially Rolls Out New Yahoo Search Results Design — Yahoo has officially announced the redesign they've been testing for the past couple weeks is now live. — The new design boasts a faster load time, search results higher up on the page, a new navigation bar at the top, and a more consistent look with the Yahoo homepage.

More: Exclamation, TechCrunch, Gizmodo, Engadget, Inquirer, CNET, The Next Web, Business Insider, The Verge, Mashable, Techdows, WebProNews and Yahoo! Search Blog

Chris Davies / SlashGear:

Windows 8.1 shares highlights in video walkthrough — Windows 8.1 is a big deal for Microsoft, the first significant update for the OS, and the opportunity to address some of the lingering user frustrations: not just add in the Start button. The company has shared a new video …

More: Engadget, ExtremeTech, The Verge, Crave and LaptopMemo

Dean Takahashi / VentureBeat:

Sony unveils Haswell-based Vaio laptops that can be converted into tablets — Sony is unveiling a new line of Vaio Pro and Vaio Duo laptops with new Intel Haswell-based microprocessors. — Sony Duo 13 — The Vaio Pro is a touch-enabled Ultrabook laptop that runs Windows 8.

More: Sony Global, CNET, Computerworld, Softpedia News, Electronista, Digits, CNET, Gotta Be Mobile, SlashGear, The Next Web, LaptopMemo, Gizmodo, AnandTech, The Verge, Mashable, Engadget, Engadget and Engadget

David Pierce / The Verge:

Sony VAIO Pro review: 'we're going to war with the MacBook Air'

More: Business Insider and HEXUS.net Latest Content

Kevin Fitchard / GigaOM:

T-Mobile's plan to supercharge LTE: A whole lot of antennas — T-Mobile USA has been talking some smack lately about how its brand-spanking-new LTE network gives it an edge over the competition. Being the last major U.S. carrier to launch LTE means T-Mobile is using the most up-to-date radio access gear …

Thanks:@kfitchard

Dan Goodin / Ars Technica:

Espionage malware infects raft of governments, industries around the world — Security researchers have blown the whistle on a computer-espionage campaign that over the past eight years has successfully compromised more than 350 high-profile targets in 40 countries.

More: Securelist / Blog, SiliconANGLE, The Register and ZDNet

Frederic Lardinois / TechCrunch:

Mozilla Readies Major Firefox Redesign As It Ponders What The Browser Of The Future Should Look Like — “Maybe we shouldn't even call it a browser anymore,” Mozilla's VP of Firefox engineering Jonathan Nightingale told me a few days ago. “'Browser' is really an antiquated word.

More: The Next Web and Business Insider

Larry Dignan / ZDNet:

Dell to investors: Icahn's deal dicey, business stinks — Summary: A special committee argues that Dell shareholders should take the cash and run and that Carl Icahn's leveraged buyout plan will hamper the company too much. — Dell's special committee to evaluate the company's plan …

More: CNET, AllThingsD, DealBook, Reuters, Bloomberg and MoneyBeat

Michelle Ma / University of Washington:

Wi-Fi signals enable gesture recognition throughout entire home — Forget to turn off the lights before leaving the apartment? No problem. Just raise your hand, finger-swipe the air, and your lights will power down. Want to change the song playing on your music system in the other room?

More: DSLreports, Gizmodo, TechHive, BBC, GigaOM, Los Angeles Times, Macgasm, Wired.co.uk, The Register, Digital Trends, Future Tech Report and The Verge

David Barboza / New York Times:

Lei Jun Builds His Xiaomi Empire by Aping Apple and Steve Jobs — BEIJING — China is notorious for its knockoffs. But now comes a knockoff of one of the gods of American ingenuity: Steven P. Jobs. — In a country where products like iPhones are made but rarely invented, Lei Jun …

More: Quartz

Andy / TorrentFreak:

UK Police Launch Campaign to Shut Down Torrent Sites — Authorities and entertainment industry companies in the UK are working together on a new initiative which targets sites said to be offering copyrighted material without permission, TorrentFreak has learned.

More: BBC, T3 News, www.idigitaltimes.co.uk, TechEye and Inquirer

Emil Protalinski / The Next Web:

comScore: Apple increases lead as top US smartphone maker, Samsung gains; Android down fourth month in a row — In the US, Apple's dominance as the top smartphone OEM during the first quarter of 2013 has spilled over into April. Samsung is gaining as well, but not quite as quickly.

More: comScore, Inc., Computerworld, CNET, Benzinga, Mashable, App Advice, AppleInsider and Neowin

Terril Yue Jones / Reuters:

China has ‘mountains of data’ about U.S. cyber attacks: official — (Reuters) - China's top Internet security official says he has “mountains of data” pointing to extensive U.S. hacking aimed at China, but it would be irresponsible to blame Washington for such attacks, and called for greater cooperation to fight hacking.

Adrianne Jeffries / The Verge:

Airbnb will fight regulators in New York City on behalf of host who was fined $2,400 — After initial hesitation, the company hired a prestigious law firm and is ‘in it for the long haul’ — The popular vacation rental service Airbnb is starting to clash with regulators in New York City …

More: TechCrunch and AllThingsD

Sponsor Posts

Subquadratic:

Subquadratic: the LLM built for 12M-token reasoning — SubQ can reason across entire codebases and document sets in one pass with no RAG workarounds. Read how SubQ 1.1 Small holds near-perfect retrieval out to 12M tokens.

Cape:

Most carriers track everything. Cape doesn't. — Unlimited talk, text & data, 24-hr metadata deletion, network ID rotation, SIM-attack defense, and more. Switch today and get 29% off for life.

Zoho:

Do you need a Zoho Partner? Here's why working with one can benefit you. — Zoho offers over 60 applications, each one built for a unique use case. From sales and marketing to finance, HR, and customer support …

IDrive:

Protecting your Cloud Applications Data — Backing up Office 365, Google Workspace, Dropbox & Salesforce data is critical to preventing data loss or corruption, complying with laws and avoiding critical downtime in case of a disaster.

Sponsor Techmeme

Featured Podcasts

Hard Fork:

Open Model Wars + Claire Stapleton's Dishy Google Memoir + Substack's Slop Fight

The future is already here. Each week, journalists Kevin Roose and Casey Newton explore and make sense of the latest in the rapidly changing world of tech.

Subscribe to Hard Fork.

Great Chat:

Tech's short-term era

A podcast mostly about tech. Brought to you weekly by Angela Du, Sally Shin, Mac Bohannon, Helen Min, and Ashley Mayer.

Subscribe to Great Chat.

Access:

Meet the most AI-pilled CEO on Earth

A show about the tech industry's inside conversation, hosted by tech reporter Alex Heath and founder whisperer Ellis Hamburger.

Subscribe to Access.

The Upstarts Podcast:

Basis's Matt Harpe: Why AI Won't Replace Accountants — It'll Make Them Richer

Veteran tech reporter Alex Konrad sits down with breakout entrepreneurs taking on the status quo to shake up their fields in AI, design, nuclear energy, space, and more.

Subscribe to The Upstarts Podcast.

Channels with Peter Kafka:

Lucas Shaw on Warner Bros' Limbo, Netflix's Anxiety, and Hollywood's Sort-of Comeback

Media and tech aren't just intersecting - they're fully intertwined. To understand how those worlds work, Peter Kafka talks to industry leaders, upstarts and observers.

Subscribe to Channels with Peter Kafka.

Tools and Weapons with Brad Smith:

Connecting the Unconnected: Doreen Bogdan-Martin

Microsoft Vice Chair and President Brad Smith speaks with leaders in government, business, and culture to explore the most critical challenges at the intersection of technology and society.

Subscribe to Tools and Weapons with Brad Smith.

Add your podcast here

About This Page

This is a Techmeme archive page. It shows how the site appeared at 12:20 PM ET, June 5, 2013.

The most current version of the site as always is available at our home page. To view an earlier snapshot click here and then modify the date indicated.