Intel

According to people who are in the know, the Supreme Court may be thinking about sending the Grokster case back a lower court as opposed to rendering a decision on the legality of peer-to-peer (P2P) networks in general.  If that occurs, Grokster’s business model will go on trial instead of the much larger issue of Continue Reading →

Jerry Romano sent me a short news clipping, “19 Entertainment owns the format rights to Pop Idol, here known as American Idol, and pulls in an estimated $1 billion annually in merchandising, ad sales, sponsorships, etc.” along with a simple personal message,”WOW!”  What is more remarkable: the fact that American Idol is can gross $1B Continue Reading →

The text of TiVo’s 8-K filing:   On March 15, 2005, we entered into a non-exclusive licensing and marketing agreement with Comcast STB Software DVR, LLC, a wholly-owned subsidiary of Comcast Corporation, and Comcast Corporation, as guarantor of Comcast STB’s obligations under the agreement. Pursuant to our agreement, we have agreed to develop a TiVo-branded Continue Reading →

There are many interesting approaches to digital rights management (DRM).  Almost all of them require the use of a technology to identify a piece of intellectual property (IP) and another piece of technology to recognize its identity.  There are several ways to do this if you have the luxury of encoding the original master with Continue Reading →

One of my favorite PowerPoint slides shows a picture of an iPod with a simple question under it: “Why is the number one personal music device made by a computer company?”  Up to now, the answer was pretty simple — the electronics and intellectual property sides of Sony simply couldn’t get it together.  While they Continue Reading →

From the AP:   WASHINGTON – A U.S. appeals panel challenged new federal rules requiring certain video devices to have technology to prevent copying digital television programs and distributing them over the Internet. U.S. Circuit Judge Harry T. Edwards told the Federal Communications Commission it “crossed the line” requiring the new anti-piracy technology in next-generation Continue Reading →

This article by Seattle Times technology writer, Kim Peterson, tells you some of the facts about Halo 2 and Microsoft’s unusual plans to make it into a movie.  This is an interesting twist on the concept of line extension.  Most video games that have tried to cross over into linear story telling have enjoyed less Continue Reading →

This item has appeared all over the news in the last few days.  It is a pretty interesting play: IBM says it is providing free access to the information in 500 company patents to individuals and groups working on open source software. The company said it believes this is the largest pledge of patents of Continue Reading →

Moore’s Law is the name the press gave to the observation made in 1965 by Gordon Moore, co-founder of Intel.  He said that the number of transistors per square inch on integrated circuits had doubled every year since the integrated circuit was invented. Moore predicted that this trend would continue for the foreseeable future. In Continue Reading →