Samsung, Apple drop suits outside U.S.
Samsung and Apple Inc. have agreed to end all patent lawsuits betweenagainst each other outside the United States in a step back from three years of legal hostilities between the world’s two largest smartphone makers.
However, Samsung Electronics Co. said Wednesday that it and Apple will continue to pursue existing cases in U.S. courts. The two companies did not strike anya cross-licensing deal.
“Samsung and Apple have agreed to drop all litigation between the two companies outside the United States,” the South Korean company said in a statement. “This agreement does not involve any licensing arrangements, and the companies are continuing to pursue the existing cases in U.S. courts.”
The announcement is a significant lessening of corporate hostilities after years of bitter patent disputes over the intellectual property rights for mobile designs and technology. The legal fights spanned about a dozen countries in Asia, North America and Europe.
Lawsuits and other legal actions by Samsung and Apple will come to an end in countries including Germany, England, France, Spain, Italy, the Netherlands, South Korea, Japan and Australia.
The patent cases in the U.S. have come with bigger awards for damages than other countries. In May, a California jury awarded Apple $119 million in a patent battle with Samsung. The same jury also ordered Apple to pay $158,400 to Samsung, finding that Apple had infringed one of Samsung’s patents in creating the iPhone 4 and 5. In a separate 2012 jury verdict, Samsung was ordered to pay Apple $930 million. Samsung appealed.
The series of high-stake lawsuits over some of the world’s most popular gadgets began in April, 2011 when Apple accused Samsung, the maker of Galaxy phones, of slavishly copying the iPhone. Samsung responded by charging Apple of stealing its mobile technology.
— The Associated Press
Pandora strikes deal with music agency
Pandora Media Inc., the pioneering Internet radio service, reached a partnership agreement with Merlin, the rights agency that represents independent record companies, in its first direct deal with music labels.
Pandora will create customized channels for artists, letting them communicate with fans, according to a statement today. Merlin, a global rights agency with more than 20,000 labels as members, will have access to data collected from Pandora’s more than 75 million monthly active users.
“This is really significant,” said Brian McAndrews, Pandora’s chief executive officer. “Pandora has used the data that we have, we’ve done incredibly well to reinvest in the business. We have not, up to this point, shared this data with artists and labels.”
The Merlin deal shows how Pandora is trying to improve its contentious relationship with the music industry, an obstacle to expansion outside of the U.S. Major labels including Universal Music’s Capitol Records and Sony Music Entertainment sued Pandora in April for failing to pay for using music recorded before 1972. In June, the U.S. Justice Department said it will review agreements that govern songwriter royalties.
While terms are confidential, the deal with Merlin is structured to protect revenue for labels that participate, according to the statement. Royalty payments to artists will increase as the partnership expands, the companies said.
Merlin was formed in 2008. Its members include distributors such as Beggars Group, Epitaph Records and Tommy Boy, representing bands such as Queens of the Stone Age, Bad Religion and Interpol. Artists and labels will be able use the data from Pandora to select tour locations, for example. The information will also allow labels to help Pandora decide which of their artists to promote.
The independent labels’ move will pressure others to reach similar deals with Pandora because artists will want higher royalties than what is promised to them through the decades-old agreements, said Jerry Reisman, a partner at law firm Reisman, Peirez, Reisman & Capobianco LLP, who represents artists and recording studio Hit Factory.
— Bloomberg News
Hong Kong court: Google autofill suit OK
HONG KONG — A court has ruled that a Hong Kong tycoon can sue Google over its autocomplete results suggesting he has links to organized crime.
In a judgment released Wednesday, the court dismissed the Internet search giant’s objections to tycoon Albert Yeung’s defamation lawsuit.
Yeung filed the lawsuit after Google refused to remove autocomplete suggestions such as “triad,” as organized crime gangs are known in China, which popped up with searches on his name.
The billionaire’s business empire includes an entertainment company that produces films and manages some of the city’s biggest celebrities. He argues that his reputation has been “gravely injured” and wants compensation.
Judge Marlene Ng disagreed with Google’s lawyers, who argued Yeung was better off asking the websites where the defamatory information was published to remove it. She said Google had the ability to censor material.
“Any risk of misinformation can spread easily as users forage in the web. The art is to find the comfortable equilibrium in between,” she said in her ruling.
It’s the latest legal headache for Google over its search service. Earlier this year, the European Union’s top court ruled that Google and other search engines must respond to requests seeking removal of links to personal information.
Last year, a German court ruled in favor of a nutritional supplements company and its owner who sued Google to remove autocomplete terms suggesting links to Scientology and fraud.
A Google spokesman declined to comment.
— The Associated Press
Facebook to buy data-protection startup
Facebook Inc. is acquiring PrivateCore, a startup that makes software for protecting data, to strengthen the security of its systems.
Terms of the deal weren’t disclosed. Facebook has been working to improve the security of its social network with encryption and the PrivateCore acquisition is part of the move to build up defenses, Chief Security Officer Joe Sullivan said in an online post.
Breaches and hacks have become common, straining the relationships of companies with their customers whose data may get compromised. Earlier this week, a U.S. security company said a gang of hackers in Russia had amassed 1.2 billion sets of looted user names and passwords. Companies from Target Corp. to EBay Inc. to Snapchat Inc. have also experienced breaches within the past year.
“Over time, we plan to deploy PrivateCore’s technology directly into the Facebook server stack,” Sullivan wrote in his post.
Facebook saves everything its more than 1 billion users create, with its servers prioritizing saving a photo of dinner just as much as a photo of a wedding. In recent years, the company has taken more direct responsibility for all the data, moving much of it to servers the Menlo Park, Calif.-based company designed itself.
PrivateCore, based in Palo Alto, Calif., was founded in 2012 by security veterans from Google Inc. and VMware Inc., according to the company’s website. The startup is backed by Foundation Capital
PrivateCore Chief Executive Officer Oded Horovitz wrote in a blog post that joining with Facebook gives the company scale to let it pursue making “the world’s connections more secure.”
— Bloomberg News