November 18th, 2009

AT&T loses bid to stop Verizon ads, responds with its own

Posted by Jason D. O'Grady @ 11:09 pm

Categories: AT&T, Legal, Television, Verizon

Tags: Advertisement, Verizon Communications Inc., AT&T Corp., Wireless And Mobility, Jason D. O'Grady

When Verizon Wireless aired a television commercial claiming it has fives times the amount of 3G coverage as “the nation’s number 2 wireless company” AT&T promptly filed suit and posted a rebuttal it “blatantly false and misleading.”

Yesterday a federal judge in Atlanta dealt AT&T a serious blow denied its request to have Verizon’s “There’s a map for that” ads pulled from the air.

So what’s AT&T to do?

Why, respond with another TV commercial, naturally!

It features actor Luke Wilson saying that AT&T has “the nation’s fastest 3G network, talk and surf at the same time, most poplar smartphones, and access to over 100,000 aps” all giving marks to AT&T, then lastly giving one mark to Verizon for “name that starts with the letter V”.

AT&T shouldn’t have bothered sparring with Verizon in the first place as it has only brought them more publicity and cost AT&T a ton of money in the long run. AT&T would have been better off spending the money they wasted answering VZW on improving their network infrastructure.

What are your thoughts on the new AT&T ad?

November 16th, 2009

Psystar massacred in court (Updated)

Posted by Jason D. O'Grady @ 1:00 am

Categories: Clone, Legal, Psystar

Tags: Psystar, Apple Mac OS, Desktops, Apple Mac OS X, Operating Systems, Software, Hardware, Jason D. O'Grady

Mac clone maker Psystar was dealt a significant legal blow on Friday when federal judge William Alsup ruled (PDF) that it violated Apple’s copyright and the Digital Millennium Copyright Act.

Groklaw called the ruling by  “a total massacre” noting that Psystar’s first-sale defense went down in flames. Psystar’s motion for summary judgment on trademark infringement and trade dress was denied as was its illusory motion for copyright misuse.

Ouch.

And that’s not the end of it. There are still issues to be decided, namely Apple’s allegations of breach of contract; induced breach of contract, trademark infringement and trademark dilution. A hearing is scheduled for December 14 to review remedies. And somewhere in Florida there’s a very fat lady singing.

Suffice it to say that Psystar would have a tough time recovering from Friday’s ruling. And it’s a shame too because Psystar filled a need in the market for an expandable desktop computer at an inexpensive price that happened to run Mac OS X. The only problem was that that last part was ruled illegal by a federal judge which pretty much put the last nail in the coffin of the scrappy little company from Florida.

At press time, the Psystar Web site was still open and accepting orders. If you want a souvenir, you may want to get your order in while you still can.

Should Psystar appeal the ruling? Will they continue to sell PCs without Mac OS X?

Tip: Groklaw

Picture: The Small Wave

Update: Psystar open sourced a bunch of their software tools in the wake of the federal judge’s ruling.

July 23rd, 2009

Apple withdraws legal threats against Bluwiki

Posted by Jason D. O'Grady @ 9:11 am

Categories: Legal

Tags: Apple Inc., OdioWorks LLC, Wiki, Online Communications, Jason D. O'Grady

OdioWorks LLC runs a free and open wiki service called BluWiki which has drawn threats from Apple’s legal department for hosting a wiki for iTunesDB.

Apple’s issue is that iTunesDB is an attempt to learn about iTunes’ database file system and create third-party software that can replicate the sync functionality of iTunes for iPhones and iPods without forcing users to run Apple’s own media software.

The Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF) maintains that Bluwiki, is just like as Wikipedia and “is open to the public for collaborative authoring and editing on any topic. The site is entirely noncommercial, operated by OdioWorks as a public service.”

According to AppleInsider:

Starting in Nov. 2008, Apple, through a series of lawsuits, claimed the very existence of iTunesDB violates the Digital Millennium Copyright Act (DMCA)’s rules on circumventing copyright locks and successfully frightened OdioWorks into taking down the wiki entries.

In April 2009 the EFF sued Apple on behalf of OdioWorks asking a court to reject Apple’s claims and allow Bluwiki to restore the pages in question. Yesterday free speech was vindicated when EFF announced that Apple sent a letter withdrawing its cease-and-desist demands and stating that “Apple no longer has, nor will it have in the future, any objection to the publication of the iTunesDB Pages.”

As a result, EFF has moved to dismiss its complaint against Apple.

This is a major win for free speech and the First Amendment.

July 21st, 2009

Apple, and pretty much everyone, sued over touchpad technology

Posted by Jason D. O'Grady @ 9:20 am

Categories: Legal, Patent, Trackpad

Tags: Patent, Texas, LG Electronics Inc., Apple Inc., Jason D. O'Grady

Apple is the target of a lawsuit by Tsera LLC, a technology firm based in Texas, claiming it infringed on its patent for a touchpad interface. Briefs filed in Federal District Court in Texas claim that Tsera owns “all right, title and interest in” a patent filed in 1999 and granted in 2003 for “methods and apparatus for controlling a portable electronic device using a touchpad.”

Tsera claims that several devices, including Apple’s iPod range, Microsoft’s Zune music player and LG’s Chocolate mobile phone handset infringe on its patent because they use a similar touchpad control interface.

Trackpads are also present in Apple’s entire MacBook notebook line (as well as in most PC notebooks) so the suit could have far-reaching implications for the entire industry.

Apple isn’t the only one in Tsera’s crosshairs, the company is suing more than 20 companies, including Auditek Corp., Bang & Olufsen Ameerica, Inc., Bang & Olufsen A/S, Coby Electronics Corp., Cowon America, Inc., Cowon Systems, Inc., Dane Elec Corp. USA, Data Station, Inc., IMA-Hong Kong, Ltd., Impecca USA, Inc., iRiver, Inc., Koninklijke Philips Electronics N.V., Lasonic Electronics Corp., LG Electronics U.S.A., Inc.,, LG Electronics, Inc., LG Electronics Mobilecomm U.S.A., Inc., Mach Speed Technologies, Inc., Meizu Technology Co., Ltd., Microsoft Corp., Philips Electronics North America Corp., Spectra Merchandising International Inc. and TrekStor GmbH & Co. KG.

Is the case frivolous or meritorious?

Tip: Telegraph.co.uk

July 7th, 2009

USDOJ scrutinizing handset exclusivity contracts

Posted by Jason D. O'Grady @ 7:55 am

Categories: AT&T, Apple, Legal

Tags: Handset, Wireless, Telecom Industry, Government, Telephony, Cellular Phones, Wi-Fi, Telecommunications, Wireless And Mobility, Networking

If you’ve been complaining to the Department of Justice about your unhappiness that the iPhone is only available on AT&T Wireless in the U.S. (a familiar refrain), your complaints haven’t fallen on deaf ears.

The WSJ reports (Google link) that the the U.S. Department of Justice has opened an inquiry into potential anti-competitive practices by the country’s largest wireless carriers. The government is apparently concerned that companies like AT&T Wireless are abusing the market power they have amassed in recent years.

The law that covers such behavior, the Sherman Antitrust Act, has been used in the past against giants ranging from Standard Oil to Microsoft Corp. It lay essentially dormant during the Bush years, with the agency bringing no major case. The telecom industry is among several sectors now coming under scrutiny. Others include health care and agriculture.

A hot-button issue that the government could take issue with is handset exclusivity contracts like the one that AT&T has with Apple to distribute the iPhone in the United States. Although the WSJ notes that the telecom review isn’t a formal investigation of any specific company and that it is expected to cover a wide range of technologies including, but not limited to, landline voice, broadband and wireless services. The wireless carriers argue that limiting exclusive deals would hurt innovation.

Who’s right in this situation? Do the carriers have the right to sign exclusive deals with handset makers? Or does that unfairly limit the choices that consumers have?

April 28th, 2009

Apple is being accused of stifling free speech; again

Posted by Jason D. O'Grady @ 8:38 am

Categories: Apple, Legal

Tags: Electronic Frontier Foundation, Apple iPod, DMCA, Apple Inc., Hash, Digital Media, Digital Music, Wiki, Consumer Electronics, Personal Technology

In November 2008 Virginia-based OdioWorks, operator of BluWiki a non-commercial wiki that promises publishing without censorship, received a takedown notice from Apple demanding that it remove user postings about how to “write software that can sync media to the latest versions of the iPhone and iPod Touch.”

Here’s the backstory courtesy of MacBlogz:

Slashdot explains: “Apple has sent a DMCA takedown notice to the IpodHash project, claiming it circumvents their FairPlay DRM scheme. Some background: Apple first added a hash to the iTunesDB file in 6th-gen iPods, but it was quickly reverse-engineered. They changed it with the release of iPhone 2.0 and a project was started to reverse the new hash, but wasn’t successful yet. My guess is Apple used the same algorithm as FairPlay for the new hash, so Apple could use the DMCA to prevent competing apps like Songbird and Banshee from talking to iPods/iPhones. BTW, don’t tell Apple, but the project uses a wiki, so the old page versions from before the takedown are still there.”

EFF explains: At the heart of this is the iTunesDB file, the index that the iPod operating system uses to keep track of what playable media is on the device. Unless an application can write new data to this file, it won’t be able to “sync” music or other content to an iPod. The iTunesDB file has never been encrypted and is relatively well understood. In iPods released after September 2007, however, Apple introduced a checksum hash to make it difficult for applications other than iTunes to write new data to the iTunesDB file, thereby hindering an iPod owner’s ability to use alternative software (like gtkpod, Winamp, or Songbird) to manage the files on her iPod.

Two San Francisco-based law firms, the Electronic Frontier Foundation and Keker & Van Nest have announced that they are taking up the case and representing BluWiki.

Apple claims that the BluWiki discussions amounted to copyright infringement and violated the Digital Millennium Copyright Act because the thread discussed methods to circumvent encryption technology.

The EFF’s Fred von Lohmann contends that no laws were broken by BluWiki because the writers of the wiki threads…

…had apparently not yet succeeded in their reverse engineering efforts and were simply discussing Apple’s code obfuscation techniques… If Apple is suggesting that the DMCA reaches people merely talking about technical protection measures, then they’ve got a serious First Amendment problem.

Full disclosure: This case is near and dear to my heart because Apple sued my ISP in 2004 for access to my email in the precident-setting Apple V. Does case. The EFF represented me in the case in which we prevailed in 2006.

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April 8th, 2009

Gift card scammers soliciting iPhone devs

Posted by Jason D. O'Grady @ 9:23 am

Categories: App Store, Developer, Legal, iPhone, iTunes, iTunes Store

Tags: Apple iPhone, Developer, Gift Card, Apple iTunes, Jason D. O'Grady

Last month I reported that Chinese crackers have broken the iTunes gift card algorithm and are selling gift card for 1.3 cents on the dollar.

Not content with the low rate of returns and poor sales from the phony gift card they’ve have hatched an even more brazen scheme to profit from the vulnerability in the iTunes store: partner with developers and split the proceeds.

AppleInsider obtained a pitch sent to the customer support email of the developer of TiltMeter Pro:

I’ve been taking a look into your application and have an offer to you. I have many itunes gift certificates for itunes usa , canada and uk to make purchases through the itunes store. I can buy your product as many times as you want and can share earnings 50 - 50.

The email originated from a free Yahoo! account and was sent to the support address listed in the iTunes App Store. Its generic reference to “your application” and free Webmail source suggests that the scammers may be using an automated script to send the come-on to numerous developers.

The profit potential in splitting the developer’s 70 percent of sales is far greater than the measly 1.3 cents the crackers were making previously and is providing a financial incentive for the crackers to continue.

It also worries me that more developers haven’t come forward about the scheme. If the hackers are indeed uses an automated tool to mass email App developers the silence on the issue could indicate that they’ve found some willing participants.

Look for some radical changes to the iTunes gift card system really soon.

March 31st, 2009

Developers selling iPhone OS 3.0 on eBay (Updated)

Posted by Jason D. O'Grady @ 9:29 pm

Categories: Developer, Legal, iPhone, iPhone 3.0

Tags: Apple iPhone, Apple Inc., Firmware, eBay Inc., Piracy, Business Operations, Corporate Law, Jason D. O'Grady

(Note: look at the post date, this is not an April Fools day joke.)

Unscrupulous “developers” have begun selling iPhone OS 3.0 (via their UDID slots) on eBay to pirates unwilling to sign up for a legitimate Apple Developer account — which costs $100. Prices range from $7 to $13.

One brazen auction, posted by nuc318iii, “a real Apple Developer for over three years” reads:

You are purchasing Apples new and unreleased 3.0 firmware for the iPhone.  This firmware will not be available to the general public until July but you can have it installed on your phone now.
…
I Just a few slots left for people to join us in this great experience.

This is a $99 value plus tax so purchase it here for way less.

GET HERE YOUR UDID REGISTERED IN ORDER TO BE BETA TESTERS AND HAVE 3.0 PROPERLY ACTIVATED IN YOUR IPHONE.

How long before Apple shuts down their accounts and/or litigates?

Update: people are also selling UDID slots in the Engadget comments. Shame!

March 29th, 2009

iPhone OS 3.0 bricking pirated iPhones

Posted by Jason D. O'Grady @ 9:13 pm

Categories: BitTorrent, Developer, Legal, Piracy, iPhone 3.0

Tags: Apple iPhone, Piracy, Internet, Spyware, Spyware, Adware & Malware, Corporate Communications, Operating Systems, Security, Business Operations, Corporate Law

Some nefarious (and impatient) iPhone owners that just can’t wait to get their grubby little mitts on iPhone OS 3.0 have resorted to installing a pirated version of the OS. But beware: pirates are being greeted by this screen after attempting to take the cheap way out:

In case you don’t recognize it, this is the iPhone’s activation screen — which loosely translates to “you’re hosed.”

The problem isn’t that the version of iPhone OS 3.0 floating around the Web contains a trojan or anything, the new OS simply checks with the mother ship to make sure that the user has an active and paid up Apple Developer Connection account.

And once you go 3.0, there’s no turning back.

According to an L.A. Times story if you don’t have an ADC account your iPhone is effectively bricked because there’s no way to roll back to version 2 of the software.

A few YouTube videos have sprung up purporting to offer solutions. One suggests that you can simply disconnect from the Internet when interfacing with iTunes to bypass the authentication process. Another involves data files and appears incredibly confusing.

The good news is that you can get your iBrick swapped out under warrany at the Apple Store, or you can stop being a cheapskate and pony up the $100 for an ADC account.

March 29th, 2009

Apple likes jailbroken iPhones too

Posted by Jason D. O'Grady @ 7:39 pm

Categories: Jailbreak, Legal, iPhone

Tags: Apple iPhone, Patent Application, Apple Inc., Gaff, Jason D. O'Grady

Somebody in Cupertino’s in a lot of hot water Monday morning. In fact, they might as well not even show up to work tomorrow.

Apparently some genius at Apple submitted a patent application for iPhone biometric security to the USPTO with evidence of jailbreaking all over it. Exhibit 500C (at right) clearly shows icons for Installer.app and SMBPrefs (which are only available on JB’d iPhones) and the iWood Realize theme from the iSpazio repository reports Engadget.

The gaff is particularly embarrassing because just last month Apple said that jailbreaking was illegal claiming that it’s a DMCA violation and involves copyright infringement.

Is Apple’s use of a jailbroken iPhone in a patent application an endorsement of jailbreaking, or a tacit agreement that its own OS is insufficient? Don’t bet your life on it, but it’s pretty funny nonetheless.