News & Commentary | Software Patents, Smartphones, and Litigation

June 19, 2018 • by Quandary Peak Research

Europe’s Regulator Extraordinaire: Margrethe Vestager

Data is currency for the biggest tech companies in the world. Apple, Facebook, Google, and other giants have predicated extremely successful business models around harvesting and leveraging data from their users. But recent scandals involving misuse of data have caught the public’s attention, leading to questions about how user information is collected…

ICOs, Securities, and the Threat of Fraud

Cryptocurrency is having a powerful moment. Once a niche concern, digital currencies like Bitcoin and Ethereum are now known quantities even among casual investors and news readers. Skyrocketing values, the hallmark of 2017’s crypto boom, made for great headlines as pundits declared that digital currencies were here to stay. But mainstream recognition…

Russian LinkedIn Hacker Faces Charges in the U.S.

A Russian man accused of hacking numerous American companies was extradited from the Czech Republic to the United States in March 2018. Yevgeniy Nikulin, who allegedly hacked LinkedIn, Dropbox, and Formspring in 2012, used employee credentials for improper activity and also conspired to illegally sell the obtained data. Mr. Nikulin is facing…

Shaping the Future of Antitrust Law: Time Warner and AT&T

The US Justice Department and AT&T’s legal battle over the intended acquisition of Time Warner entered court in late March 2018. The trial is being presided over by Judge Richard Leon of the US District Court for the District of Columbia, and it has drawn interest from a myriad of experts from…

Huawei and the Fight Over 5G

Mobile phones, and the accompanying internet access they provide, have changed the nature of communication and how we transact in the global economy. The initial evolutionary waves in mobile came from the West, where Western countries owned the patents and developed the global standards of operation. Now, Chinese telecom giant Huawei wants…

May 12, 2018 • by Ali Khoshgozaran

A Peek Into The Future of Autonomous Driving, Part 1

Future Self-Driving Cars of the Past– Advertising Archive, via Everett Collection In areas of science and technology where rapid disruption is prevalent, researchers and engineers are constantly surrounded by several challenges of varying degrees of urgency and complexity. In a continuous cycle, innovative solutions for solving these technological obstacles are found and…

Appeals Court Rules on Twitter’s Role in “Material Support” of Terrorism

An appeals court ruled in agreement with a lower court in January 2018 that Twitter was not liable for the deaths of two American military contractors, killed by a terrorist in Jordan in 2015. The ruling is the latest repudiation of the notion that social media services are willingly providing support to…

Comcast Accused of Demanding Punitive Compensation from Rival

Wave Broadband, a rival of telecom giant Comcast, has filed a complaint with the FCC, accusing the company of demanding “a punitive ransom totaling nearly $3.5 million” in order to continue airing Comcast-owned sports programming. It is the latest in a series of grievances taken to the FCC by Comcast’s competitors, who…

Trade Secrets and Cover-Ups: The Case of Waymo vs. Uber

In February 2017, Waymo filed a lawsuit in San Francisco federal court against Uber, alleging theft of trade-secrets related to Waymo’s self-driving car technology. The lawsuit, full of twists and turns, was settled earlier this month, with Uber agreeing to pay $245 million in shares to Alphabet (Google), Waymo’s parent company. Below…

Lawsuit alleges Apple Pay Patent Violation

Kenneth Weiss, the former CTO and Chairman of the Board at RSA Security, sued Apple Inc. and Visa in May 2017. Mr. Weiss is the founder of Universal Secure Registry (USR) and the inventor of RSA’s SecurID technology, and he is alleging that Apple Pay violates various patents he owns related to…