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Dark Side of the Download: Pink Floyd Sues EMI Over Online Sales
It’s standard operating practice for the music industry: Musicians sue labels, claiming they got screwed out of royalties. But from a writer’s perspective, it’s always nice when the plaintiff is a...
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Motorola and RIM Hug It Out
In February 2008, Motorola and Research In Motion filed a pair of call-and-response lawsuits, each accusing the other of violating an assortment of patents and/or demanding exorbitant royalties on...
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Pandora's Tim Westergren Speaks!
Here’s an interesting video interview BoomTown did last week with Tim Westergren, Chief Strategy Officer and founder of Pandora Media, where I interviewed him at “The Future of Music” forum in...
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Microsoft Adds Second Lawsuit to Motorola Fall Reading List
A little over a month after suing Motorola for violating its mobile patents, Microsoft has slapped the company with another suit, this one over its Xbox 360. On Tuesday Microsoft sued Motorola,...
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Motorola Announces Inevitable Microsoft Countersuit
On Tuesday Microsoft sued Motorola, accusing it of charging excessive royalties on some patent licenses Redmond uses in the Xbox. Now Motorola has responded in kind. Late Wednesday, its Motorola...
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Qualcomm Makes It Official, Grabs Atheros for $3.1 Billion
Qualcomm, the chipmaker devoted to the wireless handset business, announced today the first major tech acquisition of the year, and the biggest deal in its history, saying it will pay $3.1 billion in...
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MPEG LA Coming After Google's VP8 Video Codec
Is Google’s VP8 video codec free from patent liability? We’re about to find out. MPEG LA, the consortium that controls the AVC/H.264 video standard, issued a call for patents thought to be essential...
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Pandora's Music Fees Are Huge! And Not That Bad.
After Pandora filed to go public Friday, some people were taken aback to learn the company was spending half of its revenues on “content acquisition”–the royalties it pays the owners of all the music...
View ArticleQualcomm's Profit Rises 29 Percent
Qualcomm Inc. provided more evidence of surging demand for smartphones and tablet-style computers, posting a 29 percent increase in fiscal second-quarter earnings on revenue that jumped 46 percent. The...
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Pandora Pre-IPO Numbers Getting Bigger and Bigger
Here’s some red meat for investors thinking about buying into Pandora’s IPO: Go-go growth numbers for the company’s first three months of 2011. Pandora says revenue, users, and usage are all way, way...
View ArticleKodak Licenses Patents to Imax
Eastman Kodak Co. has licensed a portion of its patents to big-screen movie specialist Imax Corp., in a deal that will provide it with some extra cash while it works to complete a large patent sale...
View ArticleGoogle Acquires Music Royalty Manager RightsFlow
Google Inc.’s YouTube said it acquired RightsFlow Inc., a small company that tracks and processes royalty payments to songwriters and music publishers. The acquisition gives video-sharing service...
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Microsoft's Millions Help Cushion Nokia's Windows Phone Transition
While it’s clear that Nokia’s transition away from Symbian will be a bumpy road, Microsoft’s cash is helping to ease the pain. As part of Thursday’s earnings report, Nokia noted it received $250...
View ArticleApple Asked Standards Body to Set Rules for Essential Patents
Apple Inc. has asked a telecommunications standards body to set basic principles governing how member companies license their patents, an increasingly contentious topic for rivals in the smartphone...
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Videos, Consultants, Fake Steve Jobs. How Beyond Oblivion Burned $32 Million...
It’s easy to build a failed music service. Building a failed music service that blows through $32 million without ever opening its doors? That takes some work. And that’s what Beyond Oblivion pulled...
View ArticleApple Offered Licensing Deals to Patent Foes
Apple Inc. is fighting a multi-front patent war against competing makers of mobile devices, demanding injunctions that would block sales of their products. But the company has also indicated a...
View ArticleYou Know What's Cooler Than Two Million Dollars?
He’s an a–hole. That guy has $2 billion that he made from figuring out ways to steal royalties from artists, and that’s the bottom line. You can’t really trust anybody like that. – Black Keys drummer...
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Dear Amazon Shareholders: Our Customers Adore Us! Love, Jeff Bezos.
Why wouldn’t they? Even the Department of Justice acknowledges that Amazon has some of the industry’s cheapest e-book prices. A letter sent to shareholders today by founder and CEO Jeff Bezos, titled...
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With Motorola in Google's Hands, Microsoft Eyes Possibility of Patent Deal
Microsoft and Motorola have been suing each other practically everywhere but in Judge Judy’s courtroom, but could a deal be possible now that Google’s purchase of the phone maker is complete? The folks...
View ArticleAfter 95 Years, a Royalty Deal for Artists
The largest U.S. radio broadcaster and an independent Nashville record company said Tuesday they have reached a novel agreement that represents a major bet that radio’s future is online rather than...
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Motorola Mobility to Microsoft: We Demand a Royalty Recount
Here’s a big surprise: Google and Microsoft beg to differ. For months now, the software giant has been saying that Google’s Motorola Mobility unit has refused to license standards-essential patents on...
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Apple to Samsung: You Give Us $2.5 Billion and We'll Give You a...
Apple has put a dollar figure on the damages it believes that it is owed by Samsung for the company’s alleged infringement of its patents, and it’s an awfully big number. According to a court filing...
View ArticleVringo Awarded $30 Million in Patent Suit
Small technology company Vringo Inc. was awarded about $30 million in damages and granted future royalties by a federal jury in its patent suit against a handful of technology giants, including Google...
View ArticleThe More Pandora Sells, the More It Loses
A tenth of a cent might not sound like a lot of money. But Pandora Media Inc.’s 18 percent stock drop Wednesday is a sobering reminder that those fractions add up — especially when advertising sales...
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Spotify's Daniel Ek on Profits, Label Deals and Angry Musicians: "We're Doing...
Spotify’s big press event accomplished a few things today: It gave CEO Daniel Ek a chance to boast about growth, to show off new features designed to help users find new music and to make his case to...
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