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ADVERTISING BROKER Google seems to have given its blessing for Motorola to forge ahead with a patent infringement lawsuit against Apple.

Motorola Mobility, which is set to become part of Google, has alleged Apple infringed six patents with its Iphone 4S. The patents include one which is entitled “Receiver having concealed external antenna”, something that could describe pretty much every mobile phone on sale today.

Apple and Motorola have had prior legal clashes with the two firms already locked in a bitter patent battle that is set to reach trial later this year. Motorola had initially tried to get patent claims against the latest Iphone 4S added to that lawsuit, however the judge rejected that, offering Motorola the chance to file another lawsuit. At this point it is not clear if, or when, those latest claims will end up in court.

According to patents gadfly Florian Mueller, Motorola’s actions must have had Google’s blessing due to the merger agreement signed by the two firms. Mueller cited that the agreement does not allow Motorola to “assert any Intellectual Property Right in any new Action” without Google’s permission.

Google’s thumbs up to Motorola is the surest sign yet that Apple and Google will eventually end up fighting each other rather than using handset makers as their pawns. µ

TABLET MAKER Asus is being sued by Hasbro over the Transformer Prime because of its name.

The toymaking company has filed a lawsuit in Los Angeles asking for an injunction banning the device as well as payment of damages. Hasbro markets the Transformer action toys, one of which is called Optimus Prime. It claims that Asus is violating its trademark.

Hasbro told Paid Content, “Hasbro continues to aggressively protect its brands and products and the specific actions we are taking today against Asus underscores yet again Hasbro’s willingness to pursue companies who misappropriate our intellectual property for their own financial gain.”

The Transformer Prime is a follow-up device to the Transformer, which Asus launched in May. Hasbro never bothered to take any action over that tablet so we’re surprised that it has taken it this long.

There’s a chance that Hasbro will lose the lawsuit because the products are so different and therefore it’s hard for a consumer to get confused between them.

The Transformer Prime isn’t available in the UK yet. If Asus is forced to withdraw the device from the market this will no doubt disappoint large numbers of customers who have pre-ordered the tablet or are planning to splash out on one next year.

We’ve contacted Asus for its response to this situation but have had no reply yet. µ

THE EUROPEAN COMMISSION has launched a preliminary investigation of Samsung over possible FRAND patent abuse against Apple.

A recent court filing by Apple in California revealed the news when it stated, “Samsung’s litigation campaign and other conduct related to its Declared-Essential Patents is so egregious that the European Commission recently has opened an investigation to determine whether Samsung’s behavior violates EU competition laws.”

Samsung told The INQUIRER, “Samsung has at all times remained committed to fair, reasonable and non-discriminatory licensing terms for our wireless standards-related patents.”

However, the Korean firm acknowledged, “We have received a request for information from the European Commission and are cooperating fully.”

Apple’s court filing said, “Samsung’s efforts to coerce Apple into tolerating Samsung’s imitation have not been limited to the counterclaims here [in California]. Samsung has launched an aggressive, worldwide campaign to enjoin Apple from allegedly practicing Samsung’s patents.”

It explained, “Samsung has sued Apple for infringement and injunctions in no fewer than eight countries outside the United States. Indeed, Samsung’s litigation campaign and other conduct related to its Declared-Essential Patents is so egregious that the European Commission recently has opened an investigation to determine whether Samsung’s behavior violates EU competition laws. Apple brings these Counterclaims In Reply to halt Samsung’s abuse and protect consumers, the wireless telecommunications industry, and Apple from further injury.”

Update
The European Commission has confirmed that it is investigating Apple as well. It said in a statement, “The Commission has indeed sent requests for information to Apple and Samsung concerning the enforcement of standards-essential patents in the mobile telephony sector.

“Such requests for information are standard procedure in antitrust investigations, to allow the Commission to establish the relevant facts in a case. We have no other comments at this stage.” µ

Submissions are in for the 2012 Independent Games Festival, and one entry in particular already stands out: the 2012 IGF Pirate Kart. For the Pirate Kart, over 100 developers gathered some 300 games they felt weren’t “big” or “polished” enough to deserve IGF entry on their own. They’ve also released the bundle as a free download so that everyone can bear witness to this cornucopia of creative insanity.

Littered throughout the hundreds of tiny experiments you’ll find plenty of little games worth spending time with. A “Play Random Game” button even adds some suspense to your exploration of the catalogue. I had a blast running and gunning through Sos Sosowski’s Attack of the Heavenly Bats. Livestock Longstack reinvents the Wolf/Sheep/Cabbage Riddle as a brain-cramping three-tiered platformer. Beebash, a simple game about protecting a diamond from thieving bees, feels like it’d do well as a mobile game with touch controls. And I was pleasanty surprised to find that Terry Cavanagh included his excellent parody of classic RPGs, Hero’s Adventure.

They’re not all winners, of course. Many of the games seem purposefully obtuse and non-gamelike. Take Jazz, the Non-interactive Jazz Simulator, for example. All it does, as far as I can tell, is play disorganized snippets of jazz while an artists’ rendering of John Coltrane floats in front of a backdrop of giant saxophones. Weird.

In a way, this kind of weirdness is the point of the Pirate Kart. “In a form with as much untapped creative potential as the videogame, we think, a plethora of small, new ideas is more innovative than a single idea polished for months, and that the inclusion of authors from all walks of life is more valuable than the celebritizing of the few,” writes developer Anna Anthropy in the Pirate Kart’s About section.

You can download the full 1.4 GB of this bizarre bundle at the link below.

Source: 2012 IGF Pirate Kart Official Page

CHINESE AUTHORITIES have ordered an Apple supplier to close part of its plant in Suzhou after residents living nearby raised significant environmental concerns.

The Chinese government, widely criticised for its poor policies on environmental issues, has taken a tough stance with the Taiwanese company Catcher Technology, which makes metal casings for notebook computers including Apple’s Macbook Air and Macbook Pro. The company also makes chassis for Acer, Dell, Lenovo and Sony.

The shutdown follows complaints from local residents, who said that they could smell foul odours emanating from the plant.

Catcher Technology is now attempting to address concerns by refurbishing the affected part of the plant, which it hopes to complete by the end of the month. However, it will then need regulator approval before it can reopen, which could delay things considerably.

The ordered closure might mark a change in government tactics in efforts to improve China’s reputation at home and abroad. While this is good news for the environment, it could be terrible news for the technology industry, which is largely dependent on a number of Chinese companies and manufacturing plants to meet demands.

“Even assuming its competition can somehow make up for the supply shortfall with additional output while Catcher’s production is disrupted, we believe the news is generally bad for the overall [PC] sector,” said Jenny Lai, head of Taiwan research at HSBC, according to the Financial Times.

This is the latest supply setback to affect Apple. Earlier this year it was hit by supply issues after the earthquake and tsunami in Japan put some suppliers temporarily out of business.

This is also not the first environmental concern to hit Apple. In August a report was released by Chinese environmental groups that accused a number of Apple suppliers of polluting the environment. Apple’s 2010 audit also found that 80 facilities used by its suppliers were not up to scratch. Some of these might now be forced to address long-standing concerns, but if so, this will likely come at a temporary cost of lower supply to the world’s top computer makers. µ

FLOGGER OF EXPENSIVE PRINTER INK HP and its top executives have been accused of misleading investors before a slump in its stock price.

HP is facing a class action lawsuit filed by Robbins Geller Rudman and Down alleging that CEO Leo Apotheker and CFO Cathie Lesjak misled investors before making announcements that included the possible spin-off of its PC business, dumping WebOS devices and the purchase of British software outfit Autonomy.

Those announcements, all made in one afternoon, led to a 20 per cent drop in HP’s share price the following day. That, according to Reuters, was the largest one day decline in HP’s share price since 1987.

The lawsuit against HP does not specify damages but it serves to highlight the growing concern at the way Apotheker is leading HP. The firm’s announcement that it was considering leaving the PC business was a shock to many, but its decision to dump its WebOS devices was perhaps the biggest shock of the lot.

While HP’s PC business was always seen as a low margin operation, WebOS was viewed as a core part of HP’s future strategy. The firm kept banging on about slipping WebOS into as many devices as possible, however all that talk evaporated, just like HP’s Touchpads when it sold them off at fire sale prices for a massive loss.

According to Reuters, shareholder lawsuits are fairly common following large drops in stock prices. With HP typically seen as a safe bet by many investors, in the same league as IBM and Microsoft, a drop of 20 per cent in a single day was too much for investors to take. µ

THE ARGUMENTS between HP and Oracle about who is supposed to support Intel Itanium and why continue to roll on.

The last we heard Oracle was repeating its arguments that HP was privy to secret information about the end of Itanium, but had decided to keep this from it, as a means of aiding its own business.

HP, in a filing made on Thursday, refuted this suggestion and castigated Oracle for speaking nonsense.

“Oracle argues in its Opposition that by moving to file its complaint under seal HP is trying to suppress the truth about the basis for its claims against Oracle. Nothing could be further from the truth,” reads the filing.

“There is not a single word in HP’s complaint that HP is not willing – indeed eager – to make public.”

Oracle was quick to respond to this, and – perhaps fittingly – made a much more public response. “In a legal filing today, HP said it is more than willing to make its complaint against Oracle public. But HP is not willing to make public the settlement agreement upon which the complaint is based,” it said.

“Oracle is not interested in withholding anything from the public. The complaint and the settlement agreement should be fully disclosed immediately.” µ

ELECTRONICS FIRM Kogan has set out to expose major retailers for selling over priced HDMI cables to unwitting consumers.

Kogan is on the warpath to help consumers realise that they don’t need expensive HDMI cables. It is set on highlighting that large companies are only after the upsell and tricking people into spending more money.

In its blog Kogan said, “We challenge Currys and John Lewis to set up two of their so-called ‘Premium 3D TVs,’ one with their overpriced £100 HDMI cable, the other with the Kogan £4 HDMI cable. Put them side by side and let their own ‘spokespeople’ try and pick which one uses which cable.”

Earlier this week Kogan announced it was offering anyone who bought a TV at John Lewis or Currys a free HDMI cable.

In response to the challenge, Currys told The INQUIRER, “We will not be changing our position as a result of the Kogan blog.” It also said, “We sell a large range of HDMI cables with different specifications and prices tailored to our customers’ needs. Our entry level HDMI cable is currently on sale at £7.99 and our most expensive cable is at £100.99.”

A spokesman for John Lewis said, “We aim to provide our customers with a wide range of options when choosing accessories for their TVs. By providing our customers with a range of different cables which offer different specifications, we are able to help them find one to suit their specific needs.” It hasn’t confirmed whether or not it will be taking up the challenge or not.

We spoke to Ruslan Kogan himself, who told us that the campaign has been really successful and that lots of people have taken up the offer of a free cable. Kogan told us, “I don’t expect them to take up the challenge. It would be silly of them to show customers that they are ripping them off.”

We have also contacted cable giant Monster Cable to ask it what the difference is between a cheap and expensive HDMI cable. In a rather large document on HDMI it said, “Monster may cost more, but it’s worth it.” It claims that its products are made with precision manufacturing techniques and exceed current specification so that they don’t need to be upgraded.

Kogan confirmed with us that the main reason for the campaign is to expose what it thinks is a con. Kogan said, “We don’t care where people buy their equipment, truth is the winner in the end.” µ

What’s in a Benchmark? This is a pertinent question that all users need to ask themselves, because if you don’t know what a benchmark actually tests and how that relates to the real world, the scores are meaningless. Today, AMD has announced that they are resigning from BAPCo over a long standing dispute over the weighting of scores within the SYSmark suite. AMD specifically references SYSmark 2012 (SM12), but there have been complaints in the past and the latest release is apparently the proverbial straw that broke the camel’s back.

You can read more about the decision on Cheif Marketing Officer (CMO) Nigel Dessau’s blog, but this announcement comes at an interesting time since BAPCo just shipped us copies of the final SM12 release. We haven’t had a chance to run the suite yet, and we’ll still have a look at the results and see how AMD and Intel platforms compare at some point, but it looks like we have a foregone conclusion: Intel will come out ahead. What we really need to examine is why Intel gets a better score.

If you’ve been reading AnandTech for any length of time, you’ll know that we place a lot more weight on real-world benchmarks rather than synthetic tests, but certain tasks can be very difficult to test in a meaningful way. How do you measure every day tasks like surfing the web in a meaningful way when most CPUs are 95% idle performing that task? When we really look at the market right now, in many cases we can conclude that just about any current computer will be fast enough for 90% of users. If you want to surf the Internet, write email, work in Office applications, watch some movies, listen to music, etc. you can do that on anything from a lowly AMD Brazos netbook to a hex-core monster system. Yes, we did leave out Atom, because there are certain areas where it falls short—specifically, certain movie formats prove to be too much for the current Atom platform, particularly if you’re looking at HD H.264 content (e.g. YouTube and Hulu).

Reading through AMD’s announcement and Nigel’s blog, it’s pretty clear what AMD is after: they want the GPU to play a more prominent role in measurements of overall system performance. On the one hand, we could say that AMD is simply trying to get benchmarks to favor their APUs, since Brazos and Llano easily surpass the Intel competition when it comes to graphics and video prowess. This would certainly be true, but then we also have to consider what users are actually doing with their PCs. SYSmark has always included a variety of tests, and certainly knowing how fast your computer is in regards to Excel performance can be useful. However, AMD claims that a disproportionate weight is given to some tests, with mention of optical character recognition and file compression activities in particular.

We don’t have the full SM12 whitepaper yet, but we can look at the list of applications that are tested, and a few things immediately stand out. There are two web browsers in the list, but both versions are now outdated. Internet Explorer 8 has been replaced by Internet Explorer 9, and Firefox 3.6 is replaced by Firefox 4.0—with Firefox 5 just around the corner. Without newer browsers, HTML5 is basically untested by SM12, and while we understand that SM12 has been in development for a while, for something calling itself 2012 to include mostly 2010 applications feels out of place. Considering IE9 and FF4 both shift to GPU-accelerated engines, AMD would certainly have benefited from the use of the latest versions. The remaining applications look reasonable, but again we have no information on weighting of scores, so we’ll have to see how the results pan out.

Ultimately, the main thing to take away from all of this is that, just like the PCMark, 3DMark, Cinebench, SunSpider, etc. benchmarks we routinely refer to, SYSmark 2012 is merely one more tool to analyze system performance. It will be interesting to see how other elements—like the presence or lack of an SSD—impact the score. In our opinion most users would benefit far more from running something like Llano with an SSD as opposed to Sandy Bridge with an HDD, so the CPU/GPU/APU are not the only factors, but it still depends on your intended use. If you’re running a server, obviously the demands placed on the system will be far different from the average home computer. Multimedia professionals that spend a lot of time in Adobe Photoshop and/or Premiere likewise have different needs.

Is AMD right? Is heterogeneous (e.g. CPU and GPU working together) computing more important now than raw CPU performance, or is SYSmark12 merely proving what we already know: Sandy Bridge is really fast? Let us know what you think, but as always remember that when you’re looking at benchmark charts, take a minute to think about what the bars actually represent. The full news release is below, but again you can find substantially more detail in Dessau’s blog.

Update: It turns out AMD is not the only party to have left the BAPCo consortium recently. We've just confirmed with NVIDIA that they have also left the BAPCo consortium. No reason was given.

Update 2: BAPCo has released a statement in return. The consortium notes that AMD approved 80% of the development milestones and that AMD was never threatened with expulsion. The full statement is attached below.

Update 3: We've finally gotten official confirmation (as rumored earlier) that VIA has also left the consortium. They have sent a short statement to SemiAccurate which we have included below. The basis of their complaints are much the same as AMD's: they don't consider SYSMark 2012 to reflect real world usage.

AMD Will Not Endorse SYSmark 2012 Benchmark

— AMD Separates from Association with Industry Group BAPCo —

SUNNYVALE, Calif. — 21, 2011 — AMD (NYSE: AMD) today announced that it will not endorse the SYSmark 2012 Benchmark (SM2012), which is published by BAPCo (Business Applications Performance Corporation). Along with the withdrawal of support, AMD has resigned from the BAPCo organization.

“Technology is evolving at an incredible pace, and customers need clear and reliable measurements to understand the expected performance and value of their systems,” said Nigel Dessau, senior vice president and Chief Marketing Officer at AMD. “AMD does not believe SM2012 achieves this objective. Hence AMD cannot endorse or support SM2012 or remain part of the BAPCo consortium.”

AMD will only endorse benchmarks based on real-world computing models and software applications, and which provide useful and relevant information. AMD believes benchmarks should be constructed to provide unbiased results and be transparent to customers making decisions based on those results. Currently, AMD is evaluating other benchmarking alternatives, including encouraging the creation of an industry consortium to establish an open benchmark to measure overall system performance.

AMD encourages anyone wanting more details about the construction and scoring methodology of the SM2012 benchmark to contact BAPCo. For more details on AMD’s decision to exit BAPCo, please read AMD’s Executive Blog authored by Nigel Dessau.

BAPCo® Reaffirms Open Development Process For SYSmark® 2012

SAN MATEO, Calif.—(BUSINESS WIRE)—Business Applications Performance Corporation (BAPCo®) is a non-profit consortium made up of many of the leaders in the high tech field, including Dell, Hewlett-Packard, Hitachi, Intel, Lenovo, Microsoft, Samsung, Seagate, Sony, Toshiba and ARCintuition. For nearly 20 years BAPCo has provided real world application based benchmarks which are used by organizations worldwide. SYSmark® 2012 is the latest release of the premiere application based performance benchmark. Applications used in SYSmark 2012 were selected based on market research and include Microsoft Office, Adobe Creative Suite, Adobe Acrobat, WinZip, Autodesk AutoCAD and 3ds Max, and others.

Advanced Micro Devices (AMD) was, until recently, a long standing member of BAPCo. We welcomed AMD’s full participation in the two year development cycle of SYSmark 2012, AMD’s leadership role in creating the development process that BAPCo uses today and in providing expert resources for developing the workload contents. Each member in BAPCo gets one vote on any proposals made by member companies. AMD voted in support of over 80% of the SYSmark 2012 development milestones, and were supported by BAPCo in 100% of the SYSmark 2012 proposals they put forward to the consortium.

BAPCo also notes for the record that, contrary to the false assertion by AMD, BAPCo never threatened AMD with expulsion from the consortium, despite previous violations of its obligations to BAPCo under the consortium member agreement.

BAPCo is disappointed that a former member of the consortium has chosen once more to violate the confidentiality agreement they signed, in an attempt to dissuade customers from using SYSmark to assess the performance of their systems. BAPCo believes the performance measured in each of the six scenarios in SYSmark 2012, which is based on the research of its membership, fairly reflects the performance that users will see when fully utilizing the included applications.

VIA's Statement About Leaving The BAPCo Consortium

VIA today confirmed reports that we have tendered our resignation to BAPCo. We strongly believe that the benchmarking applications tests developed for SYSmark 2012 and EEcoMark 2.0 do not accurately reflect real world PC usage scenarios and workloads and therefore feel we can no longer remain as a member of the organization.

We hope that the industry can adopt a much more open and transparent process for developing fair and objective benchmarks that accurately measure real world PC performance and are committed to working with companies that share our vision.

INVESTMENT RESEARCH OUTFIT Morgan Stanley is predicting bad financial results from Research in Motion (RIM), just days after RIM started selling its Playbook tablet.

The analyst firm is expecting RIM’s earning reports to reflect its current product vacuum and said it will meet pre-announced shortfall predictions.

“Our FQ1 [estimate] assumes RIM ships 13.5M smartphones and 400k Playbooks,” wrote Ehud Gelblum, an analyst at Morgan Stanley in a research note.

“We expect RIM to report first-quarter earnings in line with its 28 April pre-announced shortfall, reflecting the product vacuum until BlackBerry 7 devices,” reads the research note.

“If recent blog speculation proves correct, the new Bold 9900 may not ship until September, while the remaining 4 devices in the BB7 (previously known as BB6.1) family may not ship until November, much later than the June/July timing the company had implied at its BlackBerry World conference.”

If anyone at RIM is reading this between their fingers it might be time for a move to behind the sofa, as the research note gets worse.

“We believe RIM has now squandered nearly every opportunity and competitive advantage it enjoyed through ineffective R&D resource management, delayed product launches and misreads of the competitive environment,” continues the analyst.

“With the 9900 launch now likely pushed out til Sept, the remaining BB7 phones now likely just launching in Oct/Nov, and new Playbook models on the way, we believe RIM may have run out of R&D capacity to launch its QNX handset in the CQ1/ FQ4 timeframe it was shooting for.”

Things could improve at the firm if it continues to adopt the Android platform and announce support for it, said the analyst, and if it releases a new smart – nay superphone – early next year.

“Longer-term, we believe RIM recently removed key bear theses which we had been expecting by announcing support for Android apps on Playbook – albeit requiring developers to load apps into BlackBerry App World – potentially growing the size of its ecosystem by a multiple of 10x, and plans to introduce a QNX-based ‘superphone’ in early CY12.” µ