Posts Tagged: "amazon"

Recently, we took a closer look at four of the largest trending stories playing out in the world of intellectual property and patents during 2016. Today we turn to the world of technology to see what trends have been developing in the technology sector over the past year. From an ever-widening scope of business activities being pursued by Silicon Valley’s largest firms to growing government authority over one sector of Internet services, there have been plenty of interesting stories playing out on the stage of America’s tech sector.

In terms of sheer numbers, in the CB Insights study, which curiously did not include patent giant and American research juggernaut IBM, Microsoft ranks supreme among this collection of five major tech firms. The Redmond, WA-based hardware and software developer has applied for a total of 16,840 patents over the seven years of the study. In second place is Google with 14,596 patent applications over the same time period. Although exact numbers for the other three firms weren’t publicly released by CB Insights, these two firms are followed by Apple (13,420 patent applications), Amazon (5,186) and Facebook (2,508), respectively. Collectively, these five companies have been pushing towards a total of 10,000 patent applications filed per year. This trend marks a sharp rise in patent application filing activities among the Big 5, which filed 3,565 patent applications collectively in 2009.

On Thursday, December 15th, Dish Network (NASDAQ:DISH) subsidiary and over-the-top (OTT) television delivery service Sling TV unveiled a new cloud-based digital video recording (DVR) technology. Customers using Sling to access live television programming can store up to 100 hours of content including full-length movies, single episodes and entire television series. Automatic deletion of oldest-watched content and simultaneous recording options are also included with the service. Sling’s cloud DVR service appears to only be available to customers accessing Sling through Roku devices in this first rollout of the program and the DVR service only works with certain channels.

Affinity Labs of Texas, LLC, lost two cases at the Federal Circuit last week, both in decisions authored by Judge Bryson, which Chief Judge Prost and Judge Wallach joining the opinions. Although the patents at issue in the two cases were different, they shared a similar specification. In the DirecTV decision, the Federal Circuit followed the Alice/Mayo framework and found the claims patent ineligible. Perhaps of note, the Court rebuffed Affinity’s arguments regarding novelty, explaining patent eligibility does not turn on novelty of the claims. In the Amazon decision the Federal Circuit ruled that basic user customization is insufficient to qualify as inventive under Mayo and Alice.

The Internet retail juggernaut that is Amazon.com continues to get stronger and it’s doing so in a way that should worry other players in the consumer electronics sector. In late June, a Deutsche Bank analyst note was issued pointing out the magnitude of Amazon’s increased dominance of consumer electronics. In 2015 there was an increase of $5.6 billion in the consumer electronics sector and Amazon was responsible for $5.1 billion of that increase. That corresponds to a 90 percent share of the 2015 increase in the consumer electronics sector. Deutsche Bank’s Mike Baker also noted that Amazon now commands a 17 percent share of the consumer electronics market, which puts them in second-place behind only Best Buy

The reason why net neutrality came up in the American political discourse in late 2014 has much to do with paid prioritization. Paid prioritization is an agreement in which a broadband service provider negotiates an arrangement with a content provider that results in the content provider being given priority access at congested Internet nodes. The Obama administration came out strongly on the topic of paid prioritization, calling for it to be explicitly banned by the FCC. The White House also called for rules preventing ISPs from blocking content or intentionally throttling any kind of data transmission. By the end of September 2014, the FCC had received 3.7 million public comments on the subject of net neutrality.

Members who pay for a $95 annual subscription to Google Express can have their groceries delivered for $2.99 per delivery, while non-members pay $4.99 per delivery. A customer must order $35 worth of goods to qualify for a Google Express delivery. This new Google Express service directly competes with Amazon Fresh, Amazon’s own same-day delivery service for handling grocery or electronic good purchases. The Prime Fresh membership costs consumers $299 per year, but orders for more than $50 worth of goods are delivered without shipping fees. Amazon is also establishing a global presence for the Fresh service, launching deliveries of fresh fruits and vegetables in the Italian city of Milan and the surrounding region.

Some states have decided that they can’t wait for a federal response on the collection of online sales tax, prompting them to enact their own measures. In Utah, where less than one percent of taxpayers actually pay the use tax they owe the state for Internet retail transactions, some state lawmakers have collaborated on crafting a bill that would give the state more power in collecting sales tax from online retailers, with or without a physical presence within the state. In South Carolina, January 1st of this year brought about the end of a tax break offered to Amazon for building a distribution center in that state. The collection of sales tax from Amazon sales to South Carolina consumers is expected to bring in about $13.8 million in additional tax revenue through 2016, according to projected revenues released by South Carolina’s tax department. The distribution centers built by Amazon serve as the physical in-state nexus which requires it to collect sales tax from South Carolina consumers.

According to Thomson Reuters 2015 list of Top 100 Global Innovators, Amazon and several other established players in mature markets are proving that it’s not just start-ups that have the potential to upend traditional business models and reinvent our world. In fact, several of the companies new to this year’s ranking of top innovators have been around a lot longer than Amazon, among them: Boehringer Ingelheim, Chevron, Exxon Mobil, Johnson Controls, Thales, and Yamaha.

2015 was a truly remarkable year for innovation and we saw major trends in self-driving cars, wearable technologies, digital wallets and much more. I hope you will enjoy this top 10 listing, which includes innovations for providing water in arid regions, wireless charging systems for electronic devices and even the collection and retransmission of sunlight. Of course, as with all of these types of lists, the criteria used for inclusion on this list is subjective, based on my own personal preferences. Please feel free to let us know if you saw something particularly noteworthy in 2015.

As bleak as the picture looked for brick-and-mortar retail, it was much brighter for e-commerce and online retail, which saw their best day ever. According to global analytics firm comScore, 2015’s Cyber Monday saw $2.28 billion in online spending from desktop computer users, the heaviest day of online spending ever recorded and an increase of 12 percent over last year’s Cyber Monday results. When including sales from mobile device consumers, Cyber Monday sales surpassed $3.1 billion.

The research and development activities at Amazon have been strong in recent years and in 2014, the company placed 59th among all companies earning patents from the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office, receiving 741 in that year; this was nearly 40 percent greater than the number of U.S. patents earned by Amazon in the previous year. During the third quarter of 2015, Amazon earned 321 U.S. patents, a quarterly pace of innovation that would far outstrip its 2014 totals… Amazon has also jumped into the world of autonomous vehicle R&D with the filing of U.S. Patent Application No. 20150277440, entitled Sense and Avoid for Automated Mobile Vehicles. This system, which could be incorporated on air, water or ground-based vehicles, is meant to keep unmanned vehicles from colliding with each other, a technology which has been heavily sought by the drone community in response to concerns by federal regulators.

Retailers always top the list of seasonal and holiday hiring sprees but one of the largest employer of seasonal workers the past few years doesn’t own a single brick-and-mortar retail establishment. That would be e-commerce giant Amazon.com, Inc. (NASDAQ:AMZN) of Seattle, WA. In 2014, the Internet retailer announced that it would hire 80,000 seasonal workers during last year’s holiday season. In 2015, Amazon has upped that number to 100,000 workers that it plans to employ on at least a temporary basis. This makes Amazon the single largest employer of seasonal workers during 2015, ahead of United Parcel Service, Inc. (NYSE:UPS) and its 95,000 holiday hires.

Although some tech companies publishing earnings reports had rockier third quarters than others, performance was very good almost across the board, making now a very good time to be in the consumer or high tech industries. The third quarter of 2015 is the first one for which Google reported its earnings under the name of its new parent holding company, Alphabet Inc. (NASDAQ:GOOG). The early returns are showing that the new structure is a profitable one for Alphabet, which beat analyst estimates for earnings per share (EPS) by almost 15 cents per share. It was a much different story for IBM (NYSE:IBM) of Armonk, NY, when its earnings report missed on the low side of analyst expectations, marking the 14th straight quarter for which the enterprise tech developer has reported falling revenues.

The top two spots on the list of the 100 most valuable brands are occupied this year, as last year, by Apple Inc. (NASDAQ:AAPL) and Google Inc. (NASDAQ:GOOG), respectively. These two companies have held their respective spots since 2013, when both were able to ouster The Coca-Cola Co. (NYSE:KO) from the leading position in the Interbrand study, which it had held since Interbrand began releasing the report in 2000. Interbrand’s top 10 global brands include a collection of Companies We Follow often here on IPWatchdog, including 4th-placed Microsoft Corp. (NASDAQ:MSFT), 5th-placed IBM (NYSE:IBM), 7th-placed Samsung Electronics Co. (KRX:005930), 8th-placed General Electric Company (NYSE:GE) and 10th-placed Amazon.com, Inc. (NASDAQ:AMZN).