Apple using 'bogus' patents to make Android more expensive, says Google

Google lawyer accuses rival companies including Apple, Oracle and Microsoft of running an anti-competitive strategy to stifle innovation and push up prices

Google has accused iPhone-maker Apple of using 'bogus patents' to make Android phones more expensive. Photograph: Kimberly White/Reuters/Corbis

Google has accused Apple, Microsoft, Oracle and "other companies" of trying to make Android smartphones more expensive to consumers by running a "hostile, organised campaign" against it by using "bogus patents" acquired from the bankrupt Canadian company Nortel and their existing patent holdings.

Its chief legal officer, David Drummond, alleges that the companies are effectively imposing a "tax" to push up the price of Android devices. "Microsoft and Apple have always been at each other's throats, so when they get into bed together you have to start wondering what's going on," Drummond wrote in a blog post.

But Microsoft has hit back, with its general counsel Brad Smith claiming on Twitter that Microsoft invited Google to bid jointly for the Nortel patents – and was turned down. Representatives from Apple and Oracle declined to comment.

Drummond alleges that the rival companies are using an "anti-competitive strategy [which] is also escalating the cost of patents way beyond what they're actually worth" and using them to stifle innovation.

Drummond writes that "in this instance we thought it was important to speak out and make it clear that we're determined to preserve Android as a competitive choice for consumers, by stopping those who are trying to strangle it".

He asserts that: "Microsoft and Apple's winning $4.5bn (£2.7bn) for Nortel's patent portfolio was nearly five times larger than the pre-auction estimate of $1bn. Fortunately, the law frowns on the accumulation of dubious patents for anti-competitive means – which means these deals are likely to draw regulatory scrutiny, and this patent bubble will pop."

A consortium including Microsoft, Apple and RIM won the bid for the Nortel patents, which cover a number of communications technologies, against a consortium of Google and Intel. Google had made a preliminary bid of $900m before the auction, but was eventually outbid despite having large reserves of cash.

Drummond says: "A smartphone might involve as many as 250,000 (largely questionable) patent claims, and our competitors want to impose a 'tax' for these dubious patents that makes Android devices more expensive for consumers. They want to make it harder for manufacturers to sell Android devices. Instead of competing by building new features or devices, they are fighting through litigation."

Microsoft has sued HTC, Motorola, Samsung and Barnes & Noble, claiming that their use of Android infringes patents that it holds, while Apple has filed a number of similar suits asserting patent claims against other companies.

HTC has admitted that it is paying Microsoft a set amount for each Android device it sells. The amount has not been disclosed but it believed to be between $5 and $15.

Apple recently won a ruling in the US that HTC infringes patents covering the iPhone. And Oracle is currently suing Google in a multi-billion-dollar lawsuit alleging that Android infringes copyright relating to its Java programming language, acquired through the purchase of Sun Microsystems.

Google launched its Android mobile operating system at the end of 2007, with the first phones appearing about a year later. It makes it available for free to handset makers, unlike companies like Microsoft which charges around $15 per handset using its Windows Phone software.

Android phones have exploded in popularity, making more than a third of all smartphones sold around the world. The platform has displaced the former leader Nokia, which is abandoning its Symbian operating system in favour of Windows Phone. Apple and RIM have their own mobile operating systems which they do not license.

Google has been hampered by a lack of intellectual property in wireless telephony, which has exposed it to patent-infringement lawsuits from rivals such as Oracle.

Drummond says Google is looking to strengthen its patent portfolio; it recently bought more than 1,000 patents from IBM. It is also in talks to buy InterDigital, a key holder of wireless patents valued at more than $3bn, according to the Wall Street Journal.

The most valuable patent that it uses covers its "PageRank" search algorithm used for organising its search results: it has an exclusive license on that from Stanford University, where Sergey Brin and Larry Page developed it. Though the PageRank patent is now available for licensing, Google has the rights to determine who can license it.

Patent acquisitions are expected to accelerate, with IBM and Kodak often mentioned as shopping intellectual property on the market.

Source : www.guardian.co.uk

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Governments, IOC and UN hit by massive cyber attack

IT security firm McAfee claims to have uncovered one of the largest ever series of cyber attacks.

It lists 72 different organisations that were targeted over five years, including the International Olympic Committee, the UN and security firms.

McAfee will not say who it thinks is responsible, but there is speculation that China may be behind the attacks.

Beijing has always denied any state involvement in cyber-attacks, calling such accusations "groundless".

Speaking to BBC News, McAfee's chief European technology officer, Raj Samani, said the attacks were still going on.

"This is a whole different level to the Night Dragon attacks that occurred earlier this year. Those were attacks on a specific sector. This one is very, very broad."

Dubbed Operation Shady RAT - after the remote access tool that security experts and hackers use to remotely access computer networks - the five-year investigation examined information from a number of different organisations which thought they may have been hit.

"From the logs we were able to see where the traffic flow was coming from," said Mr Samani.

"In some cases, we were permitted to delve a bit deeper and see what, if anything, had been taken, and in many cases we found evidence that intellectual property (IP) had been stolen.

"The United Nations, the Indian government, the International Olympic Committee, the steel industry, defence firms, even computer security companies were hit," he added.

China speculation

McAfee said it did not know what was happening to the stolen data, but it could be used to improve existing products or help beat a competitor, representing a major economic threat.

"This was what we call a spear-phish attack, as opposed to a trawl, where they were targeting specific individuals within an organisation," said Mr Samani.

"An email would be sent to an individual with the right level of access within the system; attached to the message was a piece of malware which would then execute and open a channel to a remote website giving them access.

"Once they had access to an organisation, they either did what we would call a 'smash-and-grab' operation, where they would try and grab as much information before they got caught, or they sometimes embedded themselves in the network and [tried to] spread across different systems within an organisation."

Mr Samani said his firm would "not make any guesses on where this has come from", but China is seen by many in the industry as a prime suspect.

Jim Lewis, a cyber expert with the Centre for Strategic and International Studies, was quoted by the Reuters news agency as saying it was "very likely China was behind the campaign because some of the targets had information that would be of particular interest to Beijing".

"Everything points to China. It could be the Russians, but there is more that points to China than Russia," Lewis said.

However, Graham Cluley - a computer-security expert with Sophos, is not so sure. He said: "Every time one of these reports come out, people always point the finger at China."

He told BBC News: "We cannot prove it's China. That doesn't mean we should be naive. Every country in the world is probably using the internet to spy.

"After all, it's easy and cost-effective - but there's many different countries and organisations it could be."

Mr Cluley said firms were often distracted by the very public actions of LulzSec and Anonymous, groups of online activists who have hacked a number of high-profile websites in recent months.

"Sometimes it's not about stealing your money or publicly leaking your data. It's about quietly stealing your information, which can have a very high political, military or financial value.

"In short, don't let your defences down," he added.

Source : www.bbc.co.uk

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20-million year-old ape skull found in Uganda

(Reuters) - Ugandan and French scientists have discovered a fossil of a skull of a tree-climbing ape from about 20 million years ago in Uganda's Karamoja region, the team said Tuesday.

The scientists discovered the remains on July 18 while looking for fossils in the remnants of an extinct volcano in Karamoja, a semi-arid region in Uganda's northeastern corner.

"This is the first time that the complete skull of an ape of this age has been found. It is a highly important fossil," Martin Pickford, a paleontologist from the College de France in Paris, told a news conference.

Pickford said preliminary studies of the fossil showed that the tree-climbing herbivore, roughly 10-years-old when it died, had a head the size of a chimpanzee's but a brain the size of a baboon's, a bigger ape.

Bridgette Senut, a professor at the Musee National d'Histoire Naturelle, said that the remains would be taken to Paris to be x-rayed and documented before being returned to Uganda.

"It will be cleaned in France, it will be prepared in France and then in about one year's time it will be returned to the country," Senut said.

Uganda's junior minister for tourism, wildlife and heritage said the skull was a remote cousin of the Hominidea Fossil Ape.

Source : uk.reuters.com

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Internet Explorer users have lower IQ says study

Internet Explorer users have a lower than average IQ, according to research by Consulting firm AptiQuant.

The study gave web surfers an IQ test, then plotted their scores against the browser they used.

IE surfers were found to have an average IQ lower than people using Chrome, Firefox and Safari. Users of Camino and Opera rated highest.

The report has sparked anger from IE supporters, who have threatened AptiQuant with legal action.

Researchers gave over 100,000 web surfers a free online IQ test. Scores were stored in a database along with each person's web browser data.

The results suggested that Internet Explorer surfers had an average IQ in the low eighties. Chrome, Firefox and Safari rated over 100, while minority browsers Opera and Camino had an "exceptionally higher" score of over 120.

AptiQuant stressed that using IE doesn't mean you have low intelligence. "What it really says is that if you have a low IQ then there are high chances that you use Internet Explorer," said AptiQuant CEO Leonard Howard.

The findings have been treated with scepticism by Professor David Spiegelhalter of Cambridge University's Statistical Laboratory: "They've got IE6 users with an IQ of around eighty. That's borderline deficient, marginally able to cope with the adult world.

"I believe these figures are implausibly low - and an insult to IE users."

However, Mr Howard said he didn't feel threatened by a lawsuit: "A win in a court would only give a stamp of approval and more credibility to our report."

Source : www.bbc.co.uk

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NASA probe poised for launch to Jupiter

The planet Jupiter is seen in this image released by NASA, November 24, 2010, which is a composite of three color images taken on November 18, 2010 by the Gemini North telescope in Hawaii. The composite image shows a belt that had previously vanished in Jupiter's atmosphere which is now reappearing. Scientists see thermal emission arising from the tops of Jupiter's clouds, with the hottest emissions coming from the deepest atmosphere and signifying regions with minimal overlying cloud cover. The region inside the white box is the South Equatorial Belt with an unusually bright spot, or outbreak.
Credit: Reuters/NASA/JPL/UH/NIRI/Gemini/Handout
By Irene Klotz
CAPE CANAVERAL, Florida | Thu Jul 28, 2011 2:08pm BST
CAPE CANAVERAL, Florida (Reuters) - A NASA satellite was hoisted aboard an unmanned Atlas 5 rocket at Cape Canaveral Air Force Station Wednesday in preparation for launch next week on an unprecedented mission to the heart of Jupiter.
The robotic probe called Juno is scheduled to spend one year cycling inside Jupiter's deadly radiation belts, far closer than any previous orbiting spacecraft, to learn how much water the giant planet holds, what triggers its vast magnetic fields and whether a solid core lies beneath its dense, hot atmosphere.
"Jupiter holds a lot of key secrets about how we formed," said lead scientist Scott Bolton, with the Southwest Research Institute in San Antonio, Texas.
Scientists believe Jupiter was the first planet to form after the birth of the sun, though exactly how that happened is unknown. One key piece of missing data is how much water is inside the giant planet, which circles the sun five times farther away than Earth.
Jupiter, like the sun, is comprised primarily of hydrogen and helium, with a sprinkling of other elements, like oxygen. Scientists believe the oxygen is bound with hydrogen to form water, which can be measured by microwave sounders, one of eight science instruments on Juno.
Jupiter's water content is directly tied to where -- and how -- the planet formed. Some evidence points to a planet that grew in the colder nether-regions of the solar system and then migrated inward. Other computer models show Jupiter formed at about its present location by accumulating ancient icy snowballs.
LARGER THAN SISTER PLANETS
However it grew, Jupiter ended up with a mass more than twice all its sister planets combined, giving it the gravitational muscle to hang on to nearly all of its original building materials.
"That's why it's very interesting to us if we want to go back in time and understand where we came from and how the planets were made" -- which Juno can help NASA do, Bolton said.
Juno's journey to Jupiter will take five years. Upon arrival in July 2016, Juno will thread itself into a narrow region between the planet and the inner edge of its radiation belt. The solar-powered probe will then spend a year orbiting over Jupiter's poles, coming as close as 3,100 miles above its cloud tops.
Only an atmospheric probe released by Galileo, NASA's last Jupiter spacecraft, has come closer, though that spacecraft was able to relay data for only 58 minutes before succumbing to the planet's crushing pressure and intense heat.
Juno's electronic heart is protected in a vault of titanium, but it too will fall to the harsh Jovian radiation environment after about a year. Juno's last move will be to dive into the planet's atmosphere to avoid any chance of contaminating Jupiter's potentially life-bearing moons.
Juno's launch is scheduled for August 5. The spacecraft was built by Lockheed Martin Astronautics of Denver, Colorado. The mission, the second in NASA's lower-cost, quick-turnaround New Frontiers planetary expeditions, will cost $1.1 billion.

Source : uk.reuters.com

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