Judge says Apple's 'smoking crack' with giant witness list

SAN JOSE, Calif. -- Tempers boiled over in court this morning, with the judge in the case between Apple and Samsung flat out yelling at Apple for trying to book too many witnesses in its last few hours.

"I am not going to be running around trying to get 75 pages of briefings for people who are not going to be testifying," U.S. District Judge Lucy Koh told Apple's lawyer Bill Lee.

U.S. District Court Judge Lucy Koh, presiding over the case between the two companies.

"I mean come on. 75 pages! 75 pages! You want me to do an order on 75 pages, (and) unless you're smoking crack, you know these witnesses aren't going to be called when you have less than four hours," Koh said.

"Your honor, I can assure you, I'm not smoking crack," Lee replied matter-of-factly.

The comments come as both sides are crunched for time. Each company gets 25 hours to make their case. Samsung is down to its last hour and a half, with Apple at six and a half -- time it plans to use cross-examining Samsung's witnesses and bringing up its own experts to rebut some of Samsung's claims. After that, the two companies get two hours for their closing arguments, something Koh threatened to shorten if both sides keep filing more paperwork.

In Apple's case, the company wants to bring up more than 20 witnesses to go up against some of the testimony Samsung has presented over the past few days. Samsung took the offense after Apple rested its case.                                                                                                                        

Koh's blow-up is just the latest in recent days. Earlier this week she told both companies that she didn't trust any information that came from either side's lawyers, asking instead to see papers. Yesterday she followed that up by saying that the two companies were filing too much, and that she and her staff were completely overwhelmed with the piles of paperwork from Apple and Samsung's "legion of lawyers."

(courtesy:cnet.com)

Yahoo on the hunt for COO with business skills, report says

New Yahoo CEO Marissa Mayer is looking for a chief operating officer that will free her up to handle product decisions, a new report claims.

Yahoo has enlisted the help of executive recruiter Spencer Stuart to find it a COO, All Things Digital's Kara Swisher reported yesterday, citing sources. The search firm is looking for someone who has strong business knowledge, and can handle a restructuring, the report claims.

Just a month ago, Yahoo had a COO: Ross Levinsohn. However, after Mayer was appointed CEO,Levinsohn left after reportedly feeling that he was stepped over for the job. It's believed that Levinsohn is on the lookout for any CEO jobs that might crop up.

For Mayer, the Levinsohn loss might not have been such a major deal. According to numerous reports, she has been trying to woo both former and current Google executives in an attempt to dramatically alter Yahoo's power structure. She has also copied some of Google's other practices, including offering free lunches in the company cafeteria and holding weekly companywide meetings.

Hiring a COO can help free Mayer up to focus on a host of initiatives she's reportedly planning to tackle at Yahoo. Earlier this month, the Wall Street Journal reported, citing sources, that Mayer is first focusing on improving Yahoo's search and e-mail, and wants to enhance the company's "platforms and products."

CNET has contacted Yahoo for comment on the COO report. We will update this story when we have more information.

(courtesy:cnet.com)

Google antipiracy measure skips YouTube, says report

Google's new copyright-policing policy apparently won't affect Google-owned YouTube as it does other Web sites, despite the fact that YouTube has been known to play host to illegally posted copyrighted material.

The new policy, announced yesterday, knocks sites down in search results if Google receives a lot of "valid copyright removal notices" involving content on those sites.

But Search Engine Land reports that flagging supposedly illegal content on most sites involves using an online process that starts on a page labeled "Removing Content From Google," whereas flagging content on YouTube involves using the video site's baked-in "Copyright Center." And the removal requests Google will be considering as far as search-result positioning is concerned will be those made through the Removing Content page, not through YouTube's Copyright Center.

Search Engine Land's Danny Sullivan says he asked Google to comment on the situation and got the following response from the search giant:Gizmodo's Eric Limer believes there are two ways to look at this: 1) Google is playing favorites, or 2) Google is "just rewarding YouTube for having such a proactive, easy to use, built-in takedown system."

 We're treating YouTube like any other site in search rankings. That said, we don't expect this change to demote results for popular user-generated content sites.

We've contacted Google for clarification and will update this post if and when we hear back.

You can check out Sullivan's detailed rundown here.

Google's "Removing Content From Google" page.

(Credit: Screenshot by Edward Moyer/CNET)

YouTube's "Copyright Center" page.

(Credit: Screenshot by Edward Moyer/CNET)

(courtesy:cnet.com)

2010 Apple license offer to Samsung: $30 per smartphone, $40 per tablet

SAN JOSE, Calif. -- Few patent-licensing companies would ever publicly reveal royalty agreements they make with others. Add Apple to the mix and you can see how that statement might be even truer.

Even so, tonight Apple entered into evidence in its trial with Samsung a document showing that it offered the South Korean company a licensing deal on some of its key technologies. Specifically, Apple offered to license the portfolio of patents if Samsung would pay $30 per smartphone and $40 per tablet.

To sweeten the deal, Apple offered a 20 percent discount if Samsung would cross-license some of its patents back to Apple as part of the arrangement. In addition, Apple wanted royalties on Samsung's Windows-based phones. In the document, Apple said Samsung would have owed it $250 million in 2010.

Of course things didn't quite work out for both companies, which are now in a very public trial with each other. A small portion of this exhibit came out earlier today alongside testimony from Boris Teksler, Apple's director of patent licensing and strategy. Teksler told the court about Apple's three-pronged patent strategy, noting that there was a small subset of what it considered unique patents, including designs, that it did not share with others.

The complete document is one of many that have become public in the case between the two technology giants. The case runs through next week, and is expected to last the rest of the month, with closing arguments and jury deliberation. Samsung faces fines in excess of $2.5 billion if Apple wins, though Samsung has also pointed patents back at Apple, something that could complicate a verdict.

Here's the full document:

Samsung-Apple licenses

courtesy:cnet.com

Amazon's cloud music service gets scan and match

Amazon's cloud music service has finally matched Apple's "scan and match" feature.

Amazon CEO Jeff Bezos.

(Credit: Dan Farber/CNET)

In June, CNET first reported that Amazon had obtained the licenses from the four major record companies to offer scan and match. The Web's largest retailer made it official this afternoon by announcing that starting today, users of the company's Cloud Player no longer have to suffer through the arduous task of uploading each individual song to their cloud music lockers.

For $25 per year, Amazon premium service will scan a user's hard drive and match the music found there to the more than 20 million tracks stored on the company's servers. Amazon will then stream the songs from its servers to any Web-connected device, including any Android device or iPhone, a user chooses to listen on. In addition, the merchant said it will automatically store songs previously purchased from the company.

For the $25 price, users can store up to 250,000 songs -- 10 times more than iTunes. Amazon is also offering a free version which will allow users to store up to all songs purchased from the retailer and 250 songs obtained elsewhere.

The move marks a small but important shift in strategy for Amazon. Amazon launched an unlicensed service in March 2011 and beat Apple's iTunes and Google Music to the cloud. But the labels were miffed. They believed that the best possible user experience could only be achieved with a fully licensed service.

Many industry analysts have said for a long time that storing digital media via Internet services rather than on local hard drives represents the future. It remains to be seen how much the public will embrace cloud storage. Amazon's adoption would seem to be a positive sign, however.

It seems logical that the company would have forgone licensing the service had it believed Apple's scan-and-match was a dud or had Amazon's unlicensed offering done well.

Here are more details from Amazon's press release:

 Amazon MP3 purchases -- including music that customers purchased in the past -- are automatically saved to Cloud Player, which means that customers have a secure backup copy of the music they buy from Amazon, free of charge.

Amazon scans customers' iTunes and Windows Media Player libraries and matches the songs on their computers to Amazon's 20 million song catalog. All matched songs -- even music purchased from iTunes or ripped from CDs -- are instantly made available in Cloud Player and are upgraded for free to high-quality 256 Kbps audio. Music that customers have already uploaded to Cloud Player also will be upgraded.

Any customer with a Kindle Fire, Android device, iPhone, iPod touch, or any Web browser --and soon, a Roku streaming player or Sonos home entertainment system -- can play their music anywhere.

Cloud Player is available in a free tier and a premium tier. Cloud Player Free customers can store all MP3 music purchased at Amazon, plus import up to 250 songs from their PC or Mac to Cloud Player, all at no charge. Cloud Player Premium customers can import and store up to 250,000 songs in Cloud Player for an annual fee of $24.99.

(courtesy:cnet.com)