Posts Tagged: "Facebook"

CJEU declares Commission’s US Safe Harbor Decision Invalid

The decision creates significant uncertainty for organizations who rely on Safe Harbor either for their own, internal data transfers, or because they use a service provider which, in turn, relies on Safe Harbor to provide adequacy for its transfers to the US. Alternative methods of addressing data transfers will be needed – such as implementing EU Commission approved data transfer agreements, or obtaining individual consent. Although the decision has invalidated Safe Harbor – with immediate effect – organizations will need to look to the reactions of national data protection authorities to determine how urgently to implement alternative data transfer solutions.

Ruth Boardman & Lennart Schuessler

December 1, 2015

American high tech companies take charge as the world’s most valuable brands

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).

Steve Brachmann

October 14, 2015

Google+, Twitter joint venture highlights growing social media news reporting activities

Social media has been getting a lot more serious about the business of breaking news to a massive online readership. In the middle of September, Facebook launched a new service called Signal which provides a platform for the discovery and curation of news content in a way that helps journalists see which items are trending. For Google in particular, the news content sector of the Internet is likely one where it hopes to challenge Facebook more vigorously. In July, Facebook pulled ahead of Google as a source of news content for readers obtaining their news online.

Steve Brachmann

September 23, 2015

Facebook’s social networking patents focuses on e-commerce platforms, virtual assistants

Anyone who already feels like social networks collect too much personal data may not be happy to find out about the invention protected by U.S. Patent No. 9118725, issued under the title User Activity Tracking System. The method claimed here involves receiving sensor signals from a client device which correspond to motions of the client device, determining an activity of the user by associating sensor signals with activity periods comprising a geographic location and selecting activity types corresponding to each activity period. This invention is designed to better determine the exact sports activity in which a user is engaged.

Steve Brachmann

September 12, 2015

American consumers increasingly happy with social media but not search engines

The big winner among social media e-businesses in the 2015 consumer index is Pinterest, the personal web cataloguing service headquartered in San Francisco, CA. Its consumer satisfaction index score rose by about 3 percent since last year to a score of 78, tied for the best 2015 index score of any e-business. Most people think of Pinterest as a fun website for getting party ideas or tips on how to style a home, but there have been some interesting aspects of Pinterest’s business developing. Recently, the Bank of America Corp. (NYSE:BAC) announced that Pinterest, which manages about 1.3 billion pins related to money management, is driving about 30 percent of the company’s social media traffic. A police department in Dover, DE, recently became one of a small but growing contingent of departments who have launched Pinterest accounts to advertise a public lost & found service. Pinterest users who have ever found themselves frustrated at an inability to purchase imaginative items they find on the site may be happy to note that the site is rolling out buyable pins.

Steve Brachmann

August 15, 2015

Judges Increasingly Allow Discovery of Private Facebook Content

The court ruled that the relevance of her photographs greatly outweighed Nucci’s minimal privacy interest. Nucci argued that she had a legitimate expectation of privacy in her photographs since her Facebook profile was set to “private.” However, the court was not convinced and explained that photographs posted on a social media site are neither privileged nor protected by any right of privacy, regardless of the privacy settings established by the user. After all, the court pointed out that the very nature of these social media sites is to share photographs with others, so a user cannot later claim a legitimate expectation of privacy.

Heather Antoine

April 23, 2015

Facebook and Twitter: Patent Strategies for Social Media

Both Facebook and Twitter will need to grow up and mature as companies if they are going to succeed for the long haul. A review of the patent portfolios suggests that Facebook has a much greater chance of ultimately succeeding because it seems to have a much more developed patent strategy than Twitter, which afford the company a larger number of monetization opportunities… Without a thoughtful strategy to protect the innovations they create they are leaving money on the table. It was one thing to make ideological decisions when the company was private, but publicly traded companies really need to answer to shareholders, at least in theory. Twitter’s continued allergy to filing patent applications may well come back to haunt the company, which has already seen its first quarter of declining usage.

Gene Quinn & Steve Brachmann

February 14, 2014

The Impact of the First-to-File System on Premature Disclosures of Inventions on Social Media Websites

Social media websites such as Facebook, LinkedIn and Twitter, have changed the manner that businesses communicate and market their products and innovations. Although these tools may be beneficial by creating market “buzz” for new products through rapid information sharing, they may also be detrimental to a company’s patenting practices for the same reason. If disclosures of up and coming products are made on social media websites without the company first filing for patent protection, and the disclosures are then copied by a second party who then files an application based on the company’s social media disclosures, before the company does, then the first-to-file law could bar the company from patenting the invention, whereas the second party could then obtain patent rights to the invention disclosed on the social media site.

Mark Wallerson

September 24, 2013

Salesforce.com Sued for Patent Infringement

Lexington Technology Group (LTG), an intellectual property management firm, announced on Monday that its wholly owned subsidiary, Bascom Research, filed a patent infringement lawsuit against Salesforce.com in the Northern District of California. Bascom Research is a software development company focused on building solutions for the management of complex and distributed data in healthcare and other fields. The company owns patents that relate to social networking and aspects of enterprise networking. In 2012, Bascom Research brought claims for patent infringement against five defendants, including Facebook, LinkeIn and Novell.

Gene Quinn

June 28, 2013

Patent Business: Deals, Settlements, Licenses – January 2013

The month of January started off quite busy, which in all likelihood was as the result of deals and announcements either held over or that simply couldn’t get done in the run up to closing out the year. There was a noticeable lull in news and announcements. This month some of the highlights included (1) an exclusive option to license drugs targeting Parkinson’s disease; (2) potential patent problems on the horizon for Facebook; (3) additional settlements in the Forest Laboratory’s BYSTOLIC® patent litigation; (4) the inevitable news from Acacia Research; plus more.

Gene Quinn & Angel Krippner

January 31, 2013

Patent Problem on the Horizon for Facebook?

These related patents pertain to a system and method for streaming media to a viewer and managing the media. The patents in question define media to “include audio, video, and other data,” which is a rather broad definition for media. Based on this definition of “media” then it would seem that what Facebook does to push data to a user’s news feed could be generally captured within what is described in these patents. That is not to say that I think Single Touch will be ultimately successful, but there is at least on its face a plausible connection to what is covered in these patents and what Facebook does. Enough so that further inquiry would seem advisable for both Facebook and Single Touch.

Gene Quinn

January 22, 2013

Social Media for Business 101

Whether you are just getting your feet wet in the wild world of inventions and patents, or you already have your business up and running, social media can help expand your business. Everywhere you look, there are Facebook “Like” buttons, LinkedIn “Share” buttons and Twitter “Tweet” buttons. Even Google has entered the social sharing game with Google+ allowing you to “+1” content. Social media can help catapult your business into overdrive – if you know how to use it effectively. Here are some tips to using social media to expand business.

Corinne Kerston

November 15, 2012

Facebook Founder Receives Patent on His First Application

One week ago Mark Zuckerberg, the famed founder of Facebook.com, received U.S. Patent No. 8,225,376 titled “Dynamically generating a privacy summary.” Although this is not the first patent awarded to Zuckerberg, who now has 10 issued U.S. patents, this patent is noteworthy because it relates to the the first patent application filed by Zuckerberg. Despite this patent and recent patent acquisitions, for a tech company the size of Facebook this is a paltry number of patents. If Facebook is going to stay where it is they are going to have to continue to acquire patent assets and really change the internal culture to one that is innovative.

Gene Quinn

July 24, 2012

Yahoo & Facebook Settle Patent Battle with Strategic Partnership

This is an interesting development, and one that seems to make sense from both perspectives. When giant corporations are suing each other it is because they are in immature markets, such as we see with the enormous patent litigation surrounding various smart phones, tablet devices and the operating systems that power them. Lawsuits are the mark of an immature market because in the end no one really ever wins, that is except for the lawyers. The patent litigators make out handsomely, and there is absolutely nothing wrong with that. My patent attorney brethren thank you immensely I’m sure, and I am hardly going to take issue with capitalism at work. If you want to sue someone and you have the funds to hire an attorney then have at it!

Gene Quinn

July 8, 2012

Digital Property Rights – An Evolving Business Landscape

With the advent and rise of the Internet, digital property rights have become an increasingly hot-topic in the Board rooms and Executive Offices of major companies, particularly those in the hi-tech industry. Much like the information protected under intellectual property rights, digital products provide their creators with certain protections under the law. The problems and legal challenges facing major companies like Yahoo and Facebook will help better define the laws surrounding digital property rights, and likely present opportunities as well as a whole host of new legal questions.

Anna Hicks

May 31, 2012