Negri Electronics CEO Ryan Negri said Tuesday the electronics reseller is the first defendant in what is likely to be a larger patent infringement battle pitting ExoTablet against Asus ExoTablet filed the lawsuit Jan. 25 in U.S. District Court in Atlanta (http://bit.ly/WUN9ir). ExoTablet claims Asus’s PadFone and PadFone 2 violate its patents for the TransPhone, a combination laptop-mobile phone device. Other U.S. retailers could become ExoTablet targets, Negri said in a news release. “We were extremely surprised by this proxy legal action ... and do not feel we have violated any U.S. laws,” Negri said. “We believe this lawsuit to be frivolous and without any merit whatsoever, and plan to defend it vigorously in the courts.” Negri said he believes the lawsuit is an instance of patent trolling, saying he finds it interesting that “before filing its lawsuit against us, ExoTablet spent several months trying to persuade us to sell the TransPhone, the laptop/cell phone product to which it claims a patent. We declined to offer the TransPhone to our customers after determining through independent testing that the product was of inferior quality and should not be on the market. At no time did ExoTablet make any mention of a patent dispute with ASUS, nor did they serve us with a cease-and-desist letter or injunction before filing this lawsuit. Their patent infringement lawsuit came as a total surprise and we believe may be due to our refusal to sell their subpar products” (http://bit.ly/UE86hm).
Telit Wireless Solutions’ DE910-DUAL cellular machine-to-machine module is now compatible with Sprint Nextel’s network. The module allows customers on Sprint’s M2M Solutions services to deploy a “wide range” of M2M applications over the carrier’s nationwide network, Telit said Tuesday. The module’s gpsOne GPS and GLONASS positioning support make it ideal for location-based services applications, while its extended operating temperature range makes it suitable for outdoors uses in vending, point-of-sale and telematics devices, Telit said (http://bit.ly/WMDaKh).
The Satellite Industry Association further urged the FCC not to complete the regulatory fee rulemaking before establishing fee amounts for this fiscal year. Accelerating the process will make it more likely that the easiest approach will be used, “violating both fundamental equity and the statute’s requirement that fee assessments be linked to underlying costs,” SIA said in an ex parte filing in docket 12-201 (http://bit.ly/Uog127). The NPRM is aimed at determining how the FCC will reform its processes for assessing fees in the Wireless, Media, Wireline and International bureaus (CD Oct 25 p8). The filing recounted a meeting with SIA, some of its members and staff from the Enforcement Bureau and the Office of Managing Director on the collection and assessment of regulatory fees. SIA and its members further emphasized that “given the magnitude of the regulatory fees paid today by satellite operators, any increase in existing fee levels is extremely problematic,” it said. Such an increase “directly affects the bottom line for satellite operators and must be budgeted in advance,” it said. The NPRM suggests that the only commission full-time employees (FTEs) who should be attributed to a class of licensees for regulatory fee assessment purposes are those who work in the relevant licensing bureau, SIA said: This ignores the number of FTEs in other commission bureaus and offices “whose work is solely or primarily focused on a specific group of fee payers."
NARUC supports the proposed FCC Collaboration Act of 2013 (HR-539), it said in a letter to several legislators Tuesday (http://bit.ly/UE42O0). The bill addresses “so-called” sunshine laws, which cause “significant inefficiencies and delay in FCC administrative process and undermine Federal and State joint deliberations on issues of common concern,” the letter said. NARUC urged correcting some of these laws as early as 2004, it said, citing one of the association’s resolutions. “NARUC is also particularly pleased that this much needed change will extend to the deliberations of the federal-state joint boards and conferences which serve as an important conduit for the agency to gather State input,” said the letter, signed by NARUC President Philip Jones and Telecom Committee Chair John Burke. “Necessarily, the incredible inefficiencies in deliberations imposed by the current law on full commission deliberations also plague the work of these Congressionally-mandated bodies.”
Top executives from Progeny met with FCC staff to discuss the company’s multilateration location and monitoring service (M-LMS) network “and the methods employed to avoid or mitigate potential interference to Part 15 devices,” according to an ex parte filing at the commission (http://bit.ly/VtJoiF). Among those at the meeting were Progeny Chairman Rajendra Singh and CEO Gary Parsons. The service, set to launch in about 40 markets nationwide, has been controversial (CD Feb 6 p 11). Progeny earlier submitted reports in tests of possible interference conducted in cooperation with Itron, Landis+Gyr and the Wireless Internet Service Providers Association (CD Dec 26 p13).
Smartphone data traffic management company Seven Networks bought SNRLabs, a wireless network offload and Wi-Fi tech developer. Seven Networks concurrently released its Open Channel Seamless Mobility and Open Channel Wi-Fi Quality of Experience software, which it says uses SNRLabs technology. Both companies use the Open Channel platform, allowing for easier integration of their products. The terms of the sale were not released when Seven Networks announced it Tuesday (http://bit.ly/1322kK0). Seven Networks also announced the release of its Open Channel Policy Enforcement software, which enforces policies to manage mobile traffic and enables service plan creation (http://bit.ly/ZplM2i).
Google has reduced the number of compromised email accounts by 99.7 percent “since the peak of these hijacking attempts in 2011,” Mike Hearn, Google security engineer, wrote on the Google blog Tuesday (http://bit.ly/12HZbz5). That’s due to improved security checks the company has instituted, following a change in spammer tactics in 2010 that led to a “large increase in fraudulent mail” from compromised Google accounts, he said. Though spammers can break into Web databases containing millions of usernames and passwords, and use them to hack Google accounts -- one “gang attempted sign-ins at a rate of more than 100 accounts per second” -- Google now checks “more than 120 variables” to judge whether a person signing into a Google account is the legitimate account holder, he said. Those include asking a person signing in “from a country oceans away” from the account’s last sign-in to provide the phone number associated with the account, Hearn said. Users can help themselves by using a “strong, unique password” for their account, opting in to two-step verification for their account, and updating “recovery options” in Google, such as secondary email address and phone number, he said. Facebook told users last week (http://on.fb.me/VW7Mfn) it was the victim of a “sophisticated attack” last month that took over “fully-patched” employee laptops, after a “handful of employees visited a mobile developer website that was compromised.” It “remediated” the infected machines, told law enforcement and started a “significant investigation into the exploit that continues to this day,” Facebook said: “We have found no evidence that Facebook user data was compromised.” The malware used a “zero-day” exploit to circumvent security protections in Oracle’s Java software, and while Facebook was one of the first to discover the malware, “it is clear that others were attacked and infiltrated as well,” it said: Facebook is collaborating with affected companies and entities through an “informal working group and other means."
NARUC is seeking comments on the newly released principles of its telecom task force. The association formed the group, which is examining issues of federalism and revising a 2005 white paper on the topic, at its November meeting. The NARUC task force draft principles focus on the communications industry’s consumer protections, public safety and reliability, competition, interconnection, universal service, regulatory diversity, evidence-based decision making and broadband access, affordability and adoption, NARUC said Tuesday (http://bit.ly/VFfk6k). “Because State commissioners are closest to their citizens and best positioned to determine the level of protection and service for consumers, States should take the lead” in ensuring the above areas, the association said in a Tuesday release (http://bit.ly/UDAsYU). Comments on the principles are due March 1 and should be sent to NARUC Counsel Brad Ramsay at jramsay@naruc.org with an email subject line of NARUC TASK FORCE ON FEDERALISM.
The cost of providing mobile broadband service to all targeted areas in Alaska would be “roughly $596 million,” Alaska carrier GCI said in a report it submitted to the FCC. The targeted markets are those previously identified as possible recipients of support from the FCC Mobility Fund. The primary costs are tied to establishing cell sites and backhaul from the cell site to hub points in Fairbanks, Anchorage or Juneau, the report said. The model behind the report was developed by the Brattle Group (http://bit.ly/YwVtCG). “The State of Alaska encompasses a very large area (by itself equal to 20 percent of the land mass of the Lower 48 States combined), is sparsely populated (with roughly 1.2 people per square mile, compared with over 100 people per square mile on average in the Lower 48) and has a limited road system,” the report said. “Many of Alaska’s communities are remote, located completely off-road (accessible only by airplane, boat, or snow machine).”
Fox Home Entertainment, tapping into the flexibility of digital distribution, announced Tuesday that Life of Pi will be available on digital platforms four weeks before it arrives on Blu-ray, DVD and VOD. The release will be five days before the 85th Academy Awards, for which the film has received 11 Oscar nominations. “Digital platforms offer us greater flexibility to innovate our consumer offerings,” said Mary Daily, president of worldwide marketing and chief marketing officer, for Fox Home Entertainment. Making Life of Pi available on Digital HD allows audiences to view the movie “on the device of their choice,” she said, citing use at home, on a tablet or smartphone. Life of Pi, still in theaters, is available at digital stores including Amazon Instant Video, CinemaNow, Google Play, iTunes, Kindle Fire, Nook Video, PlayStation, Vudu, Xbox Video and YouTube, for under $15, Fox said.