Techdirt. Stories about "carbonite" Easily digestible tech news... http://www.techdirt.com/ en-us Techdirt. Stories about "carbonite"http://www.techdirt.com/images/td-88x31.gifhttp://www.techdirt.com/ Thu, 17 Dec 2009 01:33:06 PST Secretive Patent Holder Sues Lots Of Companies For Remote Activation Software Mike Masnick http://www.techdirt.com/articles/20091216/0819597385.shtml http://www.techdirt.com/articles/20091216/0819597385.shtml Brian points us to the news of yet another questionable patent lawsuit filed by yet another shell company, yet again in Eastern Texas against a ton of software companies. The patent in question (5,222,134) is for a "secure system for activating personal computer software at remote locations," and was originally filed back in 1991 and granted in 1993 -- meaning that the patent is actually nearing end of life. Odd, then, that it was suddenly noticed that all these companies were infringing. The lawsuit is filed by a shell company called BetaNet, and no one seems willing to speak. The lawyers representing BetaNet won't say who is behind the company, or how they even got the patent. This is typical. Many of these types of lawsuits are filed by shell companies to hide who is actually behind them. As for the defendants, here's the list:
Adobe, Apple, Arial Software, Autodesk, Carbonite, Corel, Kodak, IBM, Intuit, Microsoft, McAfee, Online Holdings, Oracle, Rockwell, Rosetta Stone, SAP, Siemens, and Sony.
Obviously, none of those companies could have come up with ways to remotely activate software without this patent (yes, that's sarcasm). As the Register notes in the link above, even some of the software products listed as violating this patent don't seem to involve activation at all, raising serious questions about how they could possibly violate this patent. This sounds like yet another case of someone having read the book Rembrandt's in the Attic and deciding to go trolling for companies to sue with a meaningless patent.

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]]> gotta-get-it-done-before-bilski http://www.techdirt.com/comment_rss.php?sid=20091216/0819597385 Thu, 26 Mar 2009 16:06:00 PDT Is Carbonite's Lawsuit Over Lost Data A Bad Idea? Mike Masnick http://www.techdirt.com/articles/20090324/0049244225.shtml http://www.techdirt.com/articles/20090324/0049244225.shtml sued a vendor it used for hardware whose failure in 2007 led some of Carbonite's customers to lose their data. While you can understand why Carbonite is trying to sue this vendor, you have to wonder if it actually makes business sense. As some in the article note, it's not clear there's a real legal remedy here, and Carbonite may be doing this as a PR move, to make people realize that it wasn't responsible for the lost data. However, as someone who was recently on the market for such a solution, I'd say this lawsuit actually makes me think less of Carbonite. First, it reminds everyone that the company lost people's data. Second, it suggests that the company is unwilling to take responsibility for the loss. The people signing up to use Carbonite are trusting Carbonite to set things up in a way that their data won't get lost. They're not trusting Carbonite's suppliers. It's Carbonite that failed those customers, and simply trying to offload the blame does little to convince anyone that the company is setting things up in a way that will prevent this sort of thing from happening again, no matter who the tech supplier might be.

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]]> reminding-people-that-you-lost-their-data http://www.techdirt.com/comment_rss.php?sid=20090324/0049244225 Tue, 27 Jan 2009 19:13:22 PST Dear ISPs: When Launching Value Added Services, How About Actually Adding Value? Mike Masnick http://www.techdirt.com/articles/20090123/0723463501.shtml http://www.techdirt.com/articles/20090123/0723463501.shtml backup service for a stunning $31/month (with a limit of 50GB of backup storage). That seemed fairly ridiculous, given that you could get an unlimited backup service from Carbonite or Mozy for $5/month, or using JungleDisk with Amazon's S3 for exceptionally low prices as well (depending on how much you use -- but 50GB comes in at way less than $31). Now comes the news that Comcast is also launching its own backup service, with a few different price points, but starting at $5/month for only 10GB and going up from there. It's not a bad service to offer -- and, surely, Verizon and Comcast see these as ways to lock in consumers, since it now has possession of their backup data -- but it seems quite odd that these companies would offer "value added services" where the prices are more expensive than rolling your own, which doesn't come with the lock-in. And, as noted, with Comcast, using the service counts against their new broadband caps, so there isn't even a benefit there. These ISPs seem to be missing the point of these value added services. If you want to get people to use them, they should actually add value.

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]]> just-a-suggestion http://www.techdirt.com/comment_rss.php?sid=20090123/0723463501