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 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 Gabriel Weinberg, Mark Evans, David Crow, Amber Naslund, and James Carson.
Leaky bucket vs power law problems
Gabriel Weinberg offers a great analogy for the kinds of problems startups can face. Is your startup addressing a leaky bucket or a power law problem?
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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.
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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.
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Marketing is about more than the color of your new website
October 04, 2012 by Francis Moran
When prospects approach us to talk about our helping them with their marketing, they almost always mean help with their marketing programs, the stuff they do to promote their company and product or service. And while we can certainly create greater value simply through the effective management of marketing programs, real marketing consists of much more than this. Real marketing consists […]
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Great articles roundup: Big data, content loop, content creation madness, CXO, social media sales, and startup PR
September 28, 2012 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 CIO, V3, Fast Company, MarketingWeek and Dave Fleet […]
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Nobody’s ever told me, ‘I have too much money for marketing’
September 27, 2012 by Francis Moran
With the possible exception of a client vying for a huge defence procurement project in the late 1980s, an undertaking for which money certainly seemed to be no object, I’m pretty sure no-one has ever told me they have more money than they wanted or was needed […]
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Don’t risk getting burned by sending mixed messages
September 26, 2012 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 […]
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TheCodeFactory launches G2S incubator program
September 25, 2012 by Alexandra Reid
Ottawa’s startup ecosystem received some much-needed support this month as TheCodeFactory launched Government to Startup (G2S), an incubator program developed by the learning centre’s founder and president Ian Graham to address the challenges being faced […]
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Mind the gap between marketing and sales: Part 2
September 24, 2012 by Jeff Campbell
In a previous post (Mind the gap) I described the gap that exists between marketing and sales. You know, the one where marketing measures campaigns by direct engagement with materials and by customer actions on the web whereas sales measures activity of salespeople and the state of opportunities […]
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Great articles roundup: Data hype, content marketing, startup lessons, buyer behaviour, social media, guest blogging, and target audiences
September 21, 2012 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 […]
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Don’t wait until your customers say goodbye to tell them you love them
September 20, 2012 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 […]
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