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.
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From all of us here at Francis Moran and Associates, we wish you a safe and happy (Canadian) Thanksgiving.
By Francis Moran
I changed internet service providers this month and, while I was at it and since it was the same company, also cancelled my cable television service. It’s not something I did on a whim. I have been dissatisfied with the quality of the internet service I was receiving, and have long despaired of my provider’s customer service.
But that’s not why I switched. I’ve never been tempted to move from one ISP to another because, short-term promotional offers aside, the two major alternatives in my neck of the woods offered pretty much the same quality of service for pretty much the same price. And neither is any great shakes when it comes to customer service.
However, I recently learned of a local, independent service provider that offered far faster service for a lower price. Like in many other households, watching television for our family these days is much more a matter of streaming content from both paid and free sources on the web, and twice now I have bumped into the what once seemed to be a rather generous bandwidth cap with my current provider. In addition to the much higher speeds and lower cost, the cap with my new provider is more than three times higher.
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By Leo Valiquette
A couple of weeks back, I expressed my firm belief about the portability of strong writing skills between disciplines, with particular reference to journalists who make the career transition into public relations or marketing. Here’s my promised followup on the importance of not forgetting your roots in the newsroom when it comes to writing copy and placing a story.
(DISCLAIMER: Everything I am about to say stems from the assumption that you are great at what you do. And, frankly, most writers are not, but that’s a subject for another time.)
Strong writing remains at the core of effective public relations and marketing activities and this has become even more apparent with the rise of content marketing. From the ubiquitous and often maligned media release, to blog posts ghost-written for CEOs and thought leadership articles placed with leading trade and industry press, the lessons learned as a journalist remain relevant. In addition to my points below, you might also want to read Alex’s post from a couple of months back, 5 tips content marketers should take from journalists.
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By Leo Valiquette
As Francis will blog about later this week, Victoria Lennox and the team at Startup Canada were back in Ottawa last week and my brief showing at one of the events left me with plenty of food for thought.
Startup Canada wrapped up two busy days in Ottawa with a “Wine Down” event at The Hub on Bank Street on Friday evening. For those of you who don’t know it, The Hub is a co-working, meeting and learning space focused around social entrepreneurship.
I am a Gen Xer, not a boomer, and yet, to be in that room, I certainly did feel my age in a way that I haven’t before. There was plenty of idealism, ambition and energy. There’s plenty of idealism, ambition and energy to be found all over Ottawa wherever young entrepreneurs tend to congregate, be it The Hub, TheCodeFactory, or any of the various open labs, watering holes and caffeine bars that lie in the orbits of Carleton, Ottawa U and Algonquin.
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