The Many Faces of iPad: Fujitsu & STMicro Take on Apple
Apple is in danger of being made subject of a lawsuit by Japan’s Fujitsu and European chipmaker STMicroelectronics, in the wake of Apple’s adoption of the name “iPad” for its latest tablet PC eye candy. “iPad” has been a registered trademark by STMicro since 2000 for its semiconductor technology. For Fujitsu’s part, it is claiming that it created a palmtop computer of the same name, launched internally for use by its shop assistants beginning 2002. At present, Fujitsu has a pending application for the use of the trademark.
There are other companies that hold rights to use “iPad” as a trademark for products under certain categories, including Siemens for engines and motors, and Coconut Grove Pads for padded bras. These trademark infringement issues bring us back to 2007, when Apple introduced the iPhone to the public. This caused Cisco—registered owner of the name—to go to the courts. The matter was later settled when the contenders agreed to own the name jointly, for undisclosed terms.
Asked what STMicro intends to do, its representative said they were studying their options. Fujitsu’s official statement said: “[The company] is aware of Apple’s iPad announcement and the possible infringement on our trademark . . . We are currently discussing our options with our trademark counsel and have no further comment at this time.”
Trademark disputes – especially those that involve brand giants like Apple and Fujitsu or Cisco – are usually not enough to hinder the infringing company from launching the product, or to compel it to rebrand. However, if Apple loses its bid for “iPad” and Fujitsu is allowed to continue its application, or if Apple fails to justify that the two products are not confusingly similar, it will have no recourse but to buy the rights from Fujitsu.
The iPad Comparisons
Fujitsu’s iPad is a gadget that has a 3.5-inch screen, powered by an Intel processor, uses a Microsoft OS, and is Wi-fi and Bluetooth-enabled. Its purpose is to connect shop assistants and managers to sales and stock data. STMicro’s iPad, on the other hand, is less similar. “iPad” is an acronym for “integrated passive and active devices,” referring to the technology that used to manufacture semiconductors. But here’s the caveat: STMicro’s products are used in cars, washing machines, smartphones and mobile phones, among other gadgets. The implication: STMicro’s iPad technology could someday be applied to handheld devices like Apple’s iPad.
Fujitsu’s prior application in the US is dated March 2003. It was suspended after the US Patent and Trademark Office found a prior filing by Mag-Tek for keypads used to enter personal identification numbers. The application was subsequently declared abandoned, but was revived by Fujitsu in June 2009. A month later, Apple sent its proxy to the patent and trademark office of Trinidad & Tobago to register “iPad” and secure a priority date that it can claim when it applies for registration in other parts of the world. In the last quarter of 2009, Apple requested the US PTO for more time to oppose Fujitsu’s application. February 28 is the deadline for Apple to decide if it will contest Fujitsu’s application or not.
In an interview with Bloomberg, Fujitsu’s trademark lawyer, Hanify & King’s Edward Pennington said: “They probably need to talk to us and we haven’t had any direct communications with Apple,” and went on to describe Apple’s position as “awkward”.
Russian Blog Justice: Internet Influencing Politics & Law
The Russian blogosphere became a place of public outcry against the lack of adequate punishment for corrupt government officials and their relatives violating the law. A simple blog search reveals numerous posts criticizing Russian police, senators and governors who disregard any notion of the law and easily avoid any consequences for taking bribes, pursuing illegal business deals or even killing people.
But the public frustration online doesn’t always lead to real-life changes. The recent story of a car crash in one of the Siberian cities and online reaction to the incident illustrate how an improvised online campaign attempts to affect gloomy reality.
On the surface, the story of Anna Shavenkova who ran over two women while driving her Toyota on December 2, 2009 in Irkutsk is nothing new in Russia. Thousands of people are killed in road accidents every month. But the story took a slightly different spin when people found out that Anna is a daughter of Lyudmila Shavenkova, a chairwoman of the election committee in Irkutsk region, who apparently has a lot of influence on the way things are done in that part of the country.
The disturbing video [ENG] of the crash, which keeps being deleted from YouTube, has been shown by some media outlets and, at first, did not originally cause any significant discussion online. Some bloggers pointed out the indifference of people who continued walking as if nothing happened. Some were upset that Anna, the driver, got out of the car and started immediately calling someone (not the ambulance) instead of checking the condition of the victims (one of them died in a hospital several days later).
What really led to the outrage on the blogs is a result of a formal investigation of the crash by the road police in Irkutsk. Anna is allegedly being treated as a witness of the crash although she was the one who drove the car into the sidewalk and hit the by-passers.
The well-known blogger and member of “The Other Russia” oppositional coalition [EN] Marina Litvinovich (aka LJ userabstract2001) commented on it in her blog post [RUS] that quickly attracted thousands of visitors and hundreds of comments:
Многие, наверное, помнят ролик из Иркутска, где камера видеонаблюдения зафиксировала ДТП. Его виновница, Анна Шавенкова, на полной скорости сбившая двух девушек в самом центре Иркутска, вдруг оказалась не виновницей происшествия, а его свидетельницей. Кто является виновником ДТП, суд пока не установил. Вполне вероятно, что виновником окажется автомобиль. А Анна Шавенкова просто так, случайно, оказалась на водительском сидении. Чисто как свидетель.
[ENGLISH TRANSLATION] Many remember the video from Irkutsk where a camera captured a car crash. The person who caused it, Anna Shavenkova, hitting two girls in the center of Irkutsk at full speed, suddenly became a witness and not the one responsible for the crash. The court has not yet determined who is responsible. It is possible that the car will be found guilty. And Anna Shavenkova just happened to be in the driver’s seat. Just as a witness.
Litvinovich urged other bloggers to re-post this information online hoping that it would eventually catch the attention of media. Following the advice from a fellow blogger, she even created a “re-post” button at the end of the post making it easier for everyone to spread the information.
Many bloggers responded to this by enthusiastically linking to Litvinovich’s blog (the most popular reply to the post was “I re-posted”) and expressing their deepest concerns with how the local authorities handled the incident.
A good portion of online readers admitted the impotence of law in Russia against people with power and called for concrete actions. Blogger tvn1, for example, wrote [RUS] that one cannot blame a mother who tried to shield her daughter from the punishment. Instead, the blogger drew attention to the people who made it possible for a person to be above the law:
А вот судью и ментов надо мочить жёстко и показательно. Из-за них, взяточников, и стал возможным мажорский беспредел.
Нужно уже брать пример с той-же Греции, Франции т.п. Так за такие дела люди выходят на улицы и пускают в ход силу ломов, коктейлей молотова и прочих подручных средств, этим самым напоминая, что власть – слуга народа а не народ на службе у власти.
[ENGLISH TRANSLATION] We should whack the judge and police harshly and indicatively. Because of them, bribe-takers, the lawlessness became possible. We should follow the example of Greece, France, etc. People there take it to the streets and use the force of crowbars, Molotov cocktails and other means reminding the authorities that they are servants of people and not the other way around.
Proposals to “whack” authorities and “take it to the streets” were not uncommon among the bloggers.
Some suggested that the “lawlessness” is the fault of people who elected those authorities. LJ user toytronic wrote [RUS]:
В этой стране власть всегда имела граждан, почитайте историю! Радуйтесь, что в ЖЖ вам пока любезно позволяют чувствовать себя свободными! Вы сами проголосовали за вертикаль власти и парламентское большинство, а получили тотальную коррупцию, полное разложение МВД, цензуру СМИ и парламент состоящий из коррупционных чиновников, на все это мерзко смотреть! У вас была возможность избрать демократическое гражданское общество в конце 90х! Если народ не поумнеет, его ждет новый 37 год!
[ENGLISH TRANSLATION] The authorities always “had” people in this country. Read history! You should be glad that you are so far allowed to feel freedom in Livejournal [popular blogging platform in Russia - V.I.]! You were the ones who voted for the vertical of power and the parliament majority and you got total corruption, full decay of the Ministry of Internal Affairs and the parliament that consists of corrupted officials. It is sickening to look at! You had an opportunity to choose a democratic society at the end of 90’s! If people don’t get smarter, they will face the year of 1937 [the Great Purges period in Russia - V.I.]!
Another blogger called for active participation in local and regional elections to prevent corrupt politicians from taking power.
Litvinovich’s post is currently among the most popular ones on the Russian blogosphere leading in every rating of the top online entries. It seems that the author achieved the goal to attract attention of many netizens to the issue.
But it is still unclear if the improvised virtual campaign will amount to any results in real life. Litvinovich seems to be convinced that it will change things for the better. Replying to a comment doubting the effectiveness of re-posting, Litvinovich optimistically noted:
Опыт показывает, что простым привлечением внимания моно много добиться – например того, что следствие и суд к проблеме отнесутся по-другому, а не так как сейчас. Если не помоет, будем думать, что еще можно сделать.
[ENGLISH TRANSLATION] Experience shows that, by simply attracting attention, one can achieve a lot. For example, the court and further investigation will treat this incident differently and not how they treat it now. If this doesn’t help, we will think of something else we can do.
Identifying Anonymous Forum Posters is a Real Possibility
Imagine that you want to sue someone for what they wrote, anonymously, in a web-based online forum. To succeed, you’ll first have to figure out who they really are. How hard is that task? It’s a question that Harlan Yu, Ed Felten, and I have been kicking around for several months. We’ve come to some tentative answers that surprised us, and that may surprise you.
Until recently, I thought the picture was very grim for would-be plaintiffs, writing that it should be simple for “even a non-technical Internet user to engage in effectively untraceable speech online.” I still think it’s feasible for most users, if they make enough effort, to remain anonymous despite any level of scrutiny they are practically likely to face. But in recent months, as Harlan, Ed, and I have discussed this issue, we’ve started to see a flip side to the coin: In many situations, it may be far easier to unmask apparently anonymous online speakers than they, I, or many others in the policy community have appreciated. Today, I’ll tell a story that helps explain what I mean.
Anonymous online speech is a mixed bag: it includes some high value speech such as political dissent in repressive regimes, some dreck we happily tolerate on First Amendment grounds, and some material that violates the laws of many jurisdictions, including child pornography and defamatory speech. For purposes of this discussion, let’s focus on cases like the recent AutoAdmit controversy, in which a plaintiff wishes to bring a defamation suit against an anonymous or pseudonymous poster to a web based discussion forum. I’ll assume, as in the AutoAdmit suit, that the plaintiff has at least a facially plausible legal claim, so that if everyone’s identity were clear, it would also be clear that the plaintiff would have the legal option to bring a defamation suit. In the online context, these are usually what’s called “John Doe” suits, because the plaintiff’s lawyer does not know the name of the defendant in the suit, and must use “John Doe” as a stand in name for the defendant. After filing a John Doe suit, the plaintiff’s lawyer can use subpoenas to force third parties to reveal information that might help identify the John Doe defendant.
In situations like these, if a plaintiff’s lawyer cannot otherwise determine who the poster is, the lawyer will typically subpoena the forum web site, seeking the IP address of the anonymous poster. Many widely used web based discussion systems, including for example the popular Wordpress blogging platform, routinely log the IP addresses of commenters. If the web site is able to provide an IP address for the source of the allegedly defamatory comment, the lawyer will do a reverse lookup, a WHOIS search, or both, on that IP address, hoping to discover that the IP address belongs to a residential ISP or another organization that maintains detailed information about its individual users. If the IP address does turn out to correspond to a residential ISP — rather than, say, to an open wifi hub at a coffee shop or library — then the lawyer will issue a second subpoena, asking the ISP to reveal the account details of the user who was using that IP address at the time it was used to transmit the potentially defamatory comment. This is known as a “subpoena chain” because it involves two subpoenas (one to the web site, and a second one, based on the results of the first, to the ISP).
Of course, in many cases, this method won’t work. The forum web site may not have logged the commenter’s IP address. Or, even if an address is available, it might not be readily traceable back to an ISP account: the anonymous commenter may been using an anonymization tool like Tor to hide his address. Or he may have been coming online from a coffee shop or similarly public place (which typically will not have logged information about its transient users). Or, even if he reached the web forum directly from his own ISP, that ISP might be located in a foreign jurisdiction, beyond the reach of an American lawyer’s usual legal tools.
Is this a dead end for the plaintiff’s lawyer, who wants to identify John Doe? Probably not. There are a range of other parties, not yet part of our story, who might have information that could help identify John Doe. When it comes to the AutoAdmit site, one of these parties is StatCounter, a web traffic measurement service that AutoAdmit uses to keep track of trends in its traffic over time.
At the moment I am writing this post, anyone can verify that AutoAdmit uses StatCounter by visiting AutoAdmit.com and choosing “View Source” from the web browser menu. The first screenfull of web page code that comes up includes a block of text helpfully labeled “StatCounter Code,” which in turn runs a small piece of javascript that places a personalized StatCounter cookie on the machine of every user who visits AutoAdmit, or else (if one is already present) detects and records exactly which cookie it is. That’s how StatCounter can tell which visitors to AutoAdmit are new, which ones are returning, and which pages on the site are of greatest interest to new and returning users. StatCounter is in a position to track not only each user, but also each page, and each visit by a user to a certain page, over time. This includes not only the home page, but also the particular web page for each discussion “thread” on the site. Moreover, each post (even if anonymous) is marked with the time it was posted, down to the minute. So the plaintiff’s lawyer in our story could go to StatCounter, and ask only about visits to the particular thread where the relevant message was posted. If the post went up at 6:03 p.m. on a certain date, the lawyer could ask StatCounter, “What if anything do you know about the person who visited this web page at 6:03 p.m. on this date?” Of course, if John Doe’s browser is configured to refuse cookies, he wouldn’t be trackable. But most web based discussion sites, including AutoAdmit, rely on cookies to let people log in to their pseudonymous accounts in order to post comments in the first place. In any case, the web is much less convenient place without cookies, and as a practical matter most users do allow them.
In fact, the lawyer may be able to do better still: The anonymous commenter will have accessed the page at least twice — once to view the discussion as it stood before he took part, and again after clicking the button to add his own post to the mix. If StatCounter recorded both visits, as it very likely would have, then it becomes even easier to tie the anonymous commenter to his StatCounter cookie (and to whatever browsing history StatCounter has associated with that cookie).
There are a huge number of things to discuss here, and we’ll tackle several in the coming days. What would a web analytics provider like StatCounter know? Likely answers include IP addresses, times, and durations for the anonymous commenter’s previous visits to AutoAdmit. What about other, similar services, used by other sites? What about “beacons” that simply and silently collect data about users, and pay webmasters for the privilege? What about behavioral advertisers, whose business model involves tracking users across multiple sites and developing knowledge of their browsing habits and interests? What about content distribution networks? How would this picture change if John Doe were taking affirmative steps, such as using Tor, to obfuscate his identity?
These are some of the questions that we’ll try to address in future posts.
[thanks to specialkrb and freedom to tinker via cc]
