By David French
On August 24, 2012 a California jury issued a decision awarding just more than $1 billion to Apple against three Samsung Electronics companies. This ranks among the top patent awards in U.S. history. But the case is not over. The final decision, once settled by the judge, will be subject to appeal to the Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit in Washington. In other mega-patent cases this court has been proactive in terms of adjusting decisions, even those supported by a jury verdict.
On December 6, 2012 an important hearing before trial judge Lucy H. Koh will occur. Samsung has the right and will request the court to render a judgment notwithstanding the verdict issued by the jury, requesting dismissal of the action. This type of procedure is permitted and has occurred in the past, particularly where the jury’s conclusions are so unreasonable as to be perverse. But this is not likely to happen, subject to one new twist: one of the jurors who led the jury in its debates did not fully disclose his special interest and knowledge about patents when questioned before being allowed to join the jury.
Read More
My firm, has developed a meaningful relationship as a supplier of mobile applications to governments at the municipal and federal level over the past two years. Given the integration of social and location-based information into our applications, we have been the defacto leader in implementing what is termed SoLoMo (or Social, Mobile, Local) with these institutions and borne witness to their trials and successes in leveraging mobile technology to engage with their constituents.
SoLoMo:
Powered by open dataThe past four years have seen an incredible demand for governments to move towards “open data,” whereby they can stream municipal and federal data into the public’s hands permitting them to create “mashup” applications that, for example, can juxtapose police crime reports against neighborhood maps. And while I always suspected that neighbor who never mowed his lawn or opened his curtains was growing weed in his basement, open data managed to confirm it! This mashup trend first materialized on websites, and over the past two years, as mobile devices became the preferred mechanism for accessing the Internet, has become the basis of mobile application contests. Here the municipality or government runs a competition to see who can make the best mobile application out of the open data sources they have released to the public.
Read More
The eyes of the Canadian commercialization ecosystem will be focused sharply on Toronto and Ottawa this week as the Ontario and federal governments bring down new budgets that are expected to considerably reshape broad programs of industrial, research and business incentives in each jurisdiction..
At the federal level, where the budget arrives Thursday, the main concern will be around the future of the Scientific Research and Experimental Development tax credit, a widely used program that accounts for well more than half of Ottawa’s annual $7-billion support for research and development. More than 24,000 companies every year underwrite at least part of their operations through this refundable tax credit that gets paid out whether the company is profitable or not. The fear is that the federal government will follow the advice of the Expert Panel Review of the Federal Support to Research and Development, a task force that suggested SR&ED be scaled back and the savings redirected into more direct funding of research.
Read More
By Leo Valiquette
Global food giant Nestle is a champion for healthy lifestyles and good nutrition. At least, that’s the impression given by its well-oiled marketing machine if you take the time to peruse its flagship website, or the website of its Canadian subsidiary. From tips on how to get the kids off to school with quick and nutritious breakfasts, to its various environmental and charitable efforts around the world, Nestle is putting a substantial effort into building a very specific brand image.
But, as I heard from unmarketer Scott Stratten when he spoke last week at CIRA’s AGM, brand is something that can be influenced, but not dictated, regardless of how much time, effort and money is sunk into the effort. And it doesn’t take much to derail even the most well planned branding strategy.
Nestle prides itself on “responsible consumer communication,” particularly to children. In Canada, it is a member of the Children’s Food and Beverage Advertising Initiative, a “voluntary program created by 16 leading food and beverage companies. The program involves promotion and support of healthy dietary choices and lifestyles among children 12 years-old and under. Participants also focus on shifting their advertising and marketing emphasis to foods and beverages that are consistent with the principles of sound nutrition guidance.”
Advertising Standards Canada, the industry association behind Children’s Food and Beverage Advertising Initiative, even recognized Nestle and other participants last week for their upstanding efforts.
Read More
By Alexandra Reid
As a regular feature, we provide our readers with a roundup of some of the best articles we have read in the past week. On the podium this week are Social Media Explorer, TopRank, Financial Post, Forrester, Forbes, Copyblogger, and Startup North.
How data hype is destroying your social media ROI
We are all looking for the latest nugget of data that will help us optimize our social media strategies for success. Every time we see a post with an infographic about the best time to tweet or what social networks our audience is using we get excited thinking it’s just the right information to help us take our social media strategy to the next level. That’s why you see so many status updates hyping the data because it’s finally the answer we’ve been looking for … or is it?
Read More
