New Technology News

Tuesday, December 8, 2015

Mozilla on Monday launched Focus by Firefox, a free ad blocker for Safari users on iOS 9.
It lets users block the same trackers blocked by Private Browsing with Tracking Protection in Firefox for the Windows, Mac, Linux and Android platforms. The protection is based on Disconnect's open source block list.
Focus by Firefox doesn't work with Firefox for iOS because Apple doesn't make content blocking available to third-party browsers on iOS, Mozilla said. It's exploring ways to provide Focus on Firefox for iOS.
"Presumably this will provide iPhone users with more privacy," said Mike Jude, a research manager at Frost & Sullivan.
The Basis of Focus for Firefox
Focus is based on Mozilla's three content-blocking principles: content neutrality, transparency and control, and openness.
Content neutrality means content-blocking software should focus on addressing potential user needs, such as performance, security and privacy, instead of blocking specific content types, such as ads, the company said.
Content-blocking software should provide users with transparency and meaningful controls over the needs it's trying to address, Mozilla said.
When it comes to openness, content blocking should maintain a level playing field and block content under the same principles, regardless of its source. Content providers should be given ways to participate in an open Web ecosystem, the company contended, rather than being placed in a permanent penalty box that shuts off the Web to their products and services.
"Some ad blockers promote a scorched-earth strategy of denying every advertiser's content regardless of whether it's an annoying pop-up or a personally tailored advertisement," observed Alan McQuinn, a research assistant at the Information Technology & Innovation Foundation.
That "can seriously damage an online content creator's revenue stream," he told the E-Commerce Times.
A Matter of Trust
Focus aims to help create and maintain trust among Internet users, whose lack of meaningful controls over their digital lives has eroded their trust, Mozilla said. Much of the loss of control comes from the erosion of privacy caused by tracking consumers in their movements across the Web.
Tracking is the collection of data regarding a user's activity across multiple websites or applications not owned by the data collector, and retaining, using or sharing that data, according to Disconnect. That definition doesn't apply to data that's immediately aggregated or where there's a first-party relationship with the user.
With Focus, "direct ad revenue would still be protected, but downstream or upstream tracking would be limited to that known and approved by the user," Frost's Jude told the E-Commerce Times.
"There are many cases where a user might want [tracking] to be enabled, and if a user enabled tracking, then they would, in a sense, self-qualify themselves as a lead," he added.
The Impact of Focus
Focus "won't impact Apple much," Jude suggested, as it "seems to be trying to manage this as a value add for Safari."
Mozilla might benefit from the use of Focus, because "browsers are about numbers. The higher the number of users, the better the advertising value," he pointed out. "So Mozilla becomes a more private experience and the ads, although not tracked, will be more valuable."
Advertisers "are willing to pay more to advertise to individuals who are more likely to be interested in their products," the ITIF's McQuinn said.
"In this system, everyone generally wins," he continued. "Ad-supported websites increase their revenue, users receive fewer irrelevant ads and more free content, and advertisers get to be in front of their target audiences."
"The Mozilla Focus ad blocker is free and it claims to improve performance, so that's a win-win for users," said Laura DiDio, a research director at Strategy Analytics.
"It can also reduce mobile data usage," she told the E-Commerce Times, "so it's all good."
Richard Adhikari has written about high-tech for leading industry publications since the 1990s and wonders where it's all leading to. Will implanted RFID chips in humans be the Mark of the Beast? Will nanotech solve our coming food crisis? Does Sturgeon's Law still hold true? You can connect with Richard on Google+.

Mozilla Launches Free Ad Blocker for iOS 9

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Mozilla on Monday launched Focus by Firefox, a free ad blocker for Safari users on iOS 9. It lets users block the same track...

Yahoo on Wednesday announced that its board of directors decided to suspend plans to spin off its Alibaba holdings and instead will undertake a reverse spinoff, transferring its other assets and liabilities to a newly formed company.

The stock of the newly formed company will be distributed pro rata to Yahoo shareholders, resulting in two separate publicly traded companies.

Concern about the market's perception of tax risk is one of the factors that led to the suspension of the planned Alibaba share selloff, said Yahoo Chairman Maynard Webb.

If it were to sell its Alibaba shares, Yahoo would be obligated to pay at least US$10 billion in taxes. The reverse spinoff will turn Yahoo into a shell that owns shares in Alibaba and Yahoo Japan without incurring the possible tax burden.

It will take at least a year to separate the companies, Webb remarked.

Kudos for Yahoo

"Separating the underlying operational business from the stakes in Alibaba and Yahoo Japan is the right thing to do," said Barry Randall, a Covestor technology portfolio manager.

That operational business "has substantial operational cash flow" -- he estimated about $600 million annually -- as well as "several leading assets with substantial brand equity."

"Yahoo Finance is the No. 1 website, by traffic, for financial information," Randall told the E-Commerce Times, "and Yahoo Sports is a very credible media outlet."

Following the spinoff, the Internet business side of Yahoo probably will "continue to refine Marissa Mayer's message of being an everyday website where users have a reason to use one or more features -- news, sports, weather, business," Randall predicted.

The reverse spinoff likely will accelerate the company's efforts to make that Internet content more usable on mobile devices, he surmised, "and probably fend off interest from larger companies eager to have its traffic, if not its tepid growth."

Going to Market

Yahoo's Web business could be an attractive acquisition for a number of media, cable and telecommunications firms.

Verizon has been up front about its desire to snap up Yahoo. If that happens, Verizon would become a media giant, having earlier this year purchased AOL.

Chances of Verizon's making the buy "are quite good, as Yahoo would be quite complementary to AOL," Randall observed.

It's unlikely that regulators would block such a deal, he added. "While Yahoo has a significant media footprint, neither it nor AOL is dominant enough to trouble consumer watchdogs with the threat of some media monopoly."

Twitter also could be a suitor, Randall suggested. Its market cap is "about $18 billion, so issuing $2 billion to $3 billion in stock to pay for Yahoo is quite doable. It would be buying a company with roughly twice its own operating cash flow for a fraction of its own value."

However, members of Yahoo's board indicated in a conference call Wednesday morning that it had not decided to sell Yahoo or any part of it.

What About Mayer?

The reverse spinoff could be construed as a rebuff of Yahoo CEO Marissa Mayer, who proposed the Alibaba stock selloff. The resignation of Mayer ally Max Levchin from Yahoo's board is viewed as evidence of that.

However, Levchin tweeted that his departure was not a sign of anything, noting that he ended his participation in all other major company boards months ago.

Mayer has vowed to stay on as Yahoo's CEO.

That's a good thing, said Trip Chowdhry, managing director at Global Equities Research.

"Marissa is doing a wonderful job," Chowdhry told the E-Commerce Times. "She has brought innovation back to Yahoo. Before she came on, Yahoo wasn't on any mobile devices, for example."

Mayer is "one of only four people in the world who understand technology and where it's going," Chowdhry said, adding that Larry Page is another.

However, Chowdhry took issue with Mayer's statement on CNBC that Yahoo is exploring options for doing a taxable or tax-free spinoff.

"Do you think the CEO's primary job is to figure out how to dodge taxes?" he asked. "That's not Marissa's responsibility; if that's what Yahoo wants to do they should get Bernie Madoff to run the company."

Richard Adhikari has written about high-tech for leading industry publications since the 1990s and wonders where it's all leading to. Will implanted RFID chips in humans be the Mark of the Beast? Will nanotech solve our coming food crisis? Does Sturgeon's Law still hold true? You can connect with Richard on Google+.

high tech news technology news Yahoo Spins in Reverse

Yahoo Spins in Reverse

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Yahoo on Wednesday announced that its board of directors decided to suspend plans to spin off its Alibaba holdings and instead will...

Federal IT Opportunities: Steady Funding, Constant Challenges

The good news for federal information technology managers -- and the vendor community -- is that government IT budgets will remain stable for the next few years in terms of projected spending. An additional potential benefit is that a recent budget agreement will support agencies for two years, removing some of the uncertainty that has characterized recent government funding.

The spending stability doesn't mean federal IT procurement will remain boringly routine, however -- far from it.

The government-wide flat-funding scenario masks the fact that the pace of spending will proceed at different rates among individual agencies. As a result, vendor opportunities will emerge within departments and agencies that have more energetic IT investment programs, according to several recent reports. Investments will involve a wide range of activities, posing challenges for vendors.

First, on an overall funding basis, federal IT investments will remain close to US$80 billion every year from fiscal 2016 to 2021, according to the Professional Services Council, which released its latest forecast at its 2015 Vision Conference last month.

In constant dollars, civilian IT spending will dip from $49 billion in fiscal 2016 to $48 billion in 2021, while defense-sector spending will edge up from $30.5 billion in 2016 to 30.7 billion in 2021, the forecast said.

The departments of Health and Human Services, Treasury, Veterans Affairs, Agriculture and Justice will see more aggressive IT spending, according to the PSC analysis. Within the Defense Department, the Air Force will show a sprightly pace of IT investment through 2021.

Vendors Need a Flexible Approach

Marketing opportunities are available even in the face of funding, program and policy challenges, Robert Haas, PCS's team chair for the federal IT budget outlook, told attendees at the event. Vendors should "be a trusted partner to your agency" and "bring flexible, innovative, cost-effective solutions to the problem."

Agencies will continue to struggle with devoting more funds to innovative projects, known as development, modernization and enhancement spending, versus operation and maintenance -- or steady-state expenditures, he noted. For 2016, DME will remain at a relatively low level of 23 percent of all federal IT spending, in line with recent years.

Yet even a flat allocation for DME across the government will involve some interesting IT market opportunities at some agencies, an analysis by immixGroup released at its Government IT Sales Summit last month showed.

For example, the Department of Health and Human Services' proposed 2016 IT budget of $11.3 billion includes $4 billion for DME programs. These include $313.1 million for IT related to operating health insurance market exchanges and $59.9 million for the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services for a quality-assurance initiative related to various IT functions, including infrastructure and management.

Innovation Spending Projects

At agencies where the ratio of DME is on the low side, a number of projects still have some hefty funding support. The Department of Homeland Security is aiming to spend $150.3 million to transform a fragmented and paper-based system dealing with benefits processing to an electronic program at U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services. The VA is planning to spend $197.9 million in DME funds in 2016 for its 21st Century medical and patient records program.

Within the Defense Department, the U.S. Army has allocated $3 billion to DME projects in fiscal 2016. The department's Defense Information Systems Agency projects it will spend $470 million for the defense enterprise computing effort, which involves core data centers and other functions, including email and business programs.

Another factor that could tilt spending toward innovative IT projects will be adherence to the Federal Information Technology Acquisition Reform Act, which became law last year. Agency progress in meeting FITARA standards has been disappointing to date, according to a study released in last month by the House Committee on Oversight and Reform.

Agency implementation of the law is still in the early stages, PSC's Haas noted. The requirements of the act, such as enhanced transparency, better risk management, and the expansion and deployment of special, expert teams known as "IT cadres," eventually will help drive IT investments.

"FITARA holds a lot of promise," he told the E-Commerce Times.

In terms of the types of spending for more innovative aspects of IT, cloud technology and big data are advancing as areas of interest to federal agencies, according to an update Deltek issued earlier this year.

The federal addressable cloud market will grow from $2.35 billion in 2015 to $3.10 billion in 2016 -- a significant jump for one year. In 2020, federal cloud spending will reach $6.20 billion, according to the Deltek forecast.

"Policy imperatives from Congress and the White House, as well as the need for innovation, agility, and cutting costs, have motivated agencies to take a good, hard look at cloud solutions," Alex Rossino, senior principal analyst at Deltek, said in the report.

The pace of cloud adoption is picking up even though agencies "continue having difficulty understanding how to procure cloud using available acquisition methods," he said. The awkwardness in contracting vehicles is being addressed and improvements are evolving.

"Fundamentally, what needs to occur is that agencies need to be given a flexible budget authority that is on-demand and which contains money that is multiyear applicable," Rossino told the E-Commerce Times. Such an approach matches the inherent characteristic of cloud capability as an on-demand IT resource.

In the same report, Deltek estimated that federal big data spending will show steady growth, from $1.62 billion in 2015 to $1.95 billion in 2016, and then will reach $3.18 billion in 2020. Big data allocations are picking up even though budget concerns have slowed the pace of procurements.

"Despite the steep learning curve associated with big data solutions, agency pilots, niche uses, and ongoing dialogue with industry is increasing awareness and understanding of big data that Deltek believes will translate into accelerated spending through the end of this decade," Rossino said in the report.

Cybersecurity Spending a Constant Factor

Hovering over all federal IT operations, if not over all government activities, is the threat of cybersecurity breaches.

"Persistent and diverse threats, growing interconnectivity, and the criticality of technology and data to the mission of federal agencies make securing their information systems more crucial than ever," Deltek said in a separate report on federal information security, also released in October.

Federal agency demand for "vendor-furnished information security products and services" will increase from $8.6 billion in fiscal 2015 to $11.0 billion in 2020, reflecting a compound annual growth rate of 5.2 percent, according to the forecast.

"Government-wide IT policies will continue to embed cybersecurity into the fabric of federal IT acquisitions and management. Security is widely impacting acquisition policy, contract types, and RFPs," the report said.

Deltek noted several areas of focus for cybersecurity attention, including security operations service; governance, strategy and compliance; security tools and appliances; and identity and access management.

The reports from PSC, immixGroup and Deltek underscore the reality that agency discipline will be the order of the day in federal IT spending in the foreseeable future. However, valuable productivity gains associated with IT may ensure that funding will remain at stable levels even as overall federal spending comes under closer scrutiny.

"We typically don't comment on projections outside the current budget year. However, it is worth noting that OMB has asked agencies for another 5 percent cut to their overall budgets in their fiscal 2017 submissions," said Tomas O'Keefe, market intelligence consultant at immixGroup.

However, he told the E-Commerce Times, that directive "may or may not impact agency IT budgets."

John K. Higgins is a career business writer, with broad experience for a major publisher in a wide range of topics including energy, finance, environment and government policy. In his current freelance role, he reports mainly on government information technology issues for ECT News Network.

Constant Challenges Federal IT Opportunities: Steady Funding high tech news technology news

Federal IT Opportunities: Steady Funding, Constant Challenges

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The good news for federal information technology managers -- and the vendor community -- is that government IT budgets will remain ...

Monday, December 7, 2015

high tech news high_tech How to install #Free SSL certificates on your website step by step Let's Encrypt Security

How to install #Free SSL certificates on your website step by step

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Now Let's Encrypt HTTPS certificates are all free. Let's Encrypt allowed everyone to get SSL/TLS certificates are fre...

Music lovers are receiving an early holiday gift from Apple: It has increased from 25,000 to 100,000 the maximum number of music tracks that can be uploaded to the personal libraries of Apple Music and iTunes Match users, MacRumors reported Sunday.

When Apple launched its streaming music service, Apple Music, in June, Eddy Cue, senior vice president of Internet software and services, revealed on Twitter that the company was working on raising the library ceiling for iOS 9. It had yet to do so when the new version of the mobile operating system debuted in September.

Cue confirmed that Apple had begun rolling out the larger library feature for all users, according to MacRumors.

The company hasn't changed its Apple Music support page yet to reflect the new upper limit.

Both Apple Music and iTunes Match allow users to upload tracks they own into Apple iCloud where they can accessed from any Apple device. With Apple Music, for US$9.99 a month, users also can stream music they don't own from Apple's music library.

A Lot of Music

For most people, 100,000 tracks is a staggering number, but the increase probably isn't for most people.

"For people who are really into music, 25,000 can be a severe limitation," said Bob O'Donnell, founder and chief analyst for Technalysis Research.

"Apple doesn't want those people to be cut off. That would be a big mistake," he told the E-Commerce Times.

"People who are intense music fans tend to have big libraries and they tend to be influencers," O'Donnell noted. "Apple doesn't want to cut off people from using its services who are really strong influencers." The 100,000-song ceiling will have appeal to only a very small number of users, said Rob Enderle, principal analyst at the Enderle Group.

"That's a lot of music to manage, and you're never going to listen to all of it," he told the E-Commerce Times.

"In a library of 25,000, there are a lot songs you're not going to want to listen to again," Enderle said. "In 100,000, there's a whole lot more music you really don't want to listen to again, but you're still going to have to manage."

Late to the Party

While hard-core music lovers still groom and nurture their large libraries of tunes, streaming has been where the music scene has been moving for years. That's been a challenge for Apple.

"For many years, Apple was the clear leader in downloaded tracks," said Ross Rubin, senior director for industry analysis at App Annie.

"Now that a lot of the focus has shifted to streaming, Apple is more of a newcomer," he told the E-Commerce Times.

"Apple hasn't been doing well in streaming," added Technalysis' O'Donnell. "They've been challenged. They don't have the dominant position in streaming that they have in virtually every other market that they're in."

Although it arrived late to the streaming party, Apple still may have time on its side.

"They were late to the game, so many of their users already had subscription services they liked and used. Once you subscribe to a service and you're happy with it, it's hard to get you to switch because you have move your playlists and music to the new system," Enderle noted.

"Apple can overcome that as they add new Apple users because Apple users tend to stay with Apple services," he said.

Radio Without Commercials

With streaming becoming important to mobile users and so much of Apple's bottom line tied up with the fortunes of the iPhone, getting streaming right will be important to the company.

"Streaming has become more prevalent on mobile as smartphones have become de facto portable music players," App Annie's Rubin said.

"It's definitely become a much more prevalent way for consumers to access music on connected portable devices," he added. "That was surely part of the reason that Apple launched a streaming-based service."

The buying, downloading and uploading of music world where Apple is king is waning in importance.

"It's a sign of the way the world was, not the way the world is," Enderle said.

"Streaming is like radio without commercials, which, for a lot of folks, is all they really want. They don't want to manage a whole bunch of tracks," he added.

"For the last decade," Enderle continued, "the trend has been toward streaming and away from buy to own."

John Mello is a freelance technology writer and contributor to Chief Security Officer magazine. You can connect with him on Google+.

Apple Cranks Up Music Storage to 100K high tech news technology news

Apple Cranks Up Music Storage to 100K

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Music lovers are receiving an early holiday gift from Apple: It has increased from 25,000 to 100,000 the maximum number of music tra...

Going Big: Preparing to Grow Your E-Commerce Startup

Part 3: How to Go Viral: E-Commerce Marketing Strategies

Though startups start small, if all goes well, they eventually will experience growth. It's vital, therefore, for entrepreneurs to plan and prepare for this growth.

Yet what does it mean to prepare for growth? We talked to some experts, who offered tips for making your way down the yellow brick road to success.

Be Authentic

The first thing many e-business owners emphasize is that success isn't measured just by profits. It's also about achieving a dream and realizing a vision.

"I believe that our authenticity has been a driver for our success," said Grainne Kelly, inventor of the BubbleBum.

"I did not dream up an idea to make money; I set out to solve a genuine problem that I was having in my own life and solved it for myself and for others in the same position as me. We pride ourselves on our authenticity and integrity," she told the E-Commerce Times.

Success for Kelly was inventing something she knew the market needed, then making sure that potential customers knew it existed.

"We measure success based on our own goals," she noted. "I ask my kids what they want to see from the company, and they choose stores where they would like to see it [sold]. That was how we first set our retail strategy. There is no greater reward than knowing that your kids are proud of what you are achieving."

Other small e-business owners concur, saying that loving what they do is a primary way of measuring the success of their enterprises.

"There are several key measures of success," said Lisa Batra, CEO of My Kid's Threads.

"Profitability is increasing each year. We are growing. Personally, I am doing what I love. Our customers also love the concept. Our customer list is growing, and we have a high percentage of repeat customers," she told the E-Commerce Times.

Work Hard

It may be trite, but hard work goes a long way toward making a business successful, and it also helps business owners to be prepared for growth when it happens.

"I worked every hour that I had," BubbleBum's Kelly said. "I sacrificed everything, including my family time, birthdays and sleep. I didn't take a salary for almost three years, but I believed and I followed the signs that what I was doing would lead to success."

Though running an e-business is never easy at first, the hard work eventually can start to pay off in the form of increased profits and growth.

"It was painful at the time, but we are almost out the other end of the tunnel, where we can start to reap some of the rewards," Kelly said.

"I did not take any funding from the start. We grew organically, which proved the concept and the market, so that when it came to finding an investor we did not have to give up the farm," she added.

Act Big

Successful e-commerce companies also emphasize that even though your business might still be small, it helps to act as if it's larger than it is.

"Always behave as though your business is at least twice the size it is now. Put your corporate governance in place from the start. It makes it easier all around," said Kelly.

"Always project financials on the best- and worst-case scenarios. It is much easier to find cash or manage cash if you have advance notice, and it will show strength in management. Often the cash requirements are short term and come when you are on a growth trajectory," she noted.

Look Ahead

Planning for the future needs to be second nature for e-commerce companies, even when those plans are based solely on best guesses. Growth doesn't just happen, after all. It is the result of plans and strategies implemented from the beginning.

"We often advise our clients to focus on people, process and technology," said Kathy Kimple, a senior consultant at FitForCommerce.

"Using the knowledge garnered from our client engagements and provider relationships, we advise clients on benchmarks best practices and, yes, even pitfalls to look out for," told the E-Commerce Times.

E-commerce companies should ask themselves the following questions, Kimple recommended: "Do you have the right skill sets on your team, and have you laid out both a revenue growth plan and an organizational design growth plan? Do you have the tools, budget and processes in place to test, react and identify opportunities and issues quickly? And have you accessed your platform and infrastructure to identify gaps and weaknesses that are likely to happen as volume scales?"

Though no one can predict the future, business owners who ask and try to answer questions like these can strategize for growth, even when their companies are just starting out.

Finally, it never hurts to have contingency plans. Expecting the unexpected, after all, is just good business sense.

"It's helpful to plan ahead for busy periods and surges in traffic such as Black Friday and back to school, which is especially important in our space," said My Kid's Threads' Batra. "Test, test and test again."

Stay tuned for Part 5: Surprise Success.

Freelance writer Vivian Wagner has wide-ranging interests, from technology and business to music and motorcycles. She writes features regularly for ECT News Network, and her work has also appeared in American Profile, Bluegrass Unlimited, and many other publications. For more about her, visit her website. You can also connect with Vivian on Google+.

Going Big: Preparing to Grow Your E-Commerce Startup high tech news technology news

Going Big: Preparing to Grow Your E-Commerce Startup

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Part 3: How to Go Viral: E-Commerce Marketing Strategies Though startups start small, if all goes well, they eventually will exper...

Sunday, December 6, 2015

Samsung Grudgingly Agrees to Write Apple a $548M Check

Samsung and Apple last week filed a court document indicating the companies had come to an agreement under which Samsung will pay Apple US$548 million toward partial resolution of an epic legal dispute. At the heart of the conflict were Apple's allegations that Samsung effectively had stolen the technology behind certain key iPhone features for its own competing devices.

The companies filed a joint case management statement in U.S. District Court in Northern California outlining the agreement, in which Samsung said it would pay Apple within 10 days of receiving an invoice for the damages.

However, Samsung made it clear in the filing, and reiterated to the E-Commerce Times, that it reserves the right to take a second bite at the proverbial Apple in the dispute, as it considers itself eligible for a partial refund and ultimately may appeal to the U.S. Supreme court.

Apple Protects the Shield

In a $2.5 billion lawsuit filed in 2011, Apple alleged that Samsung copied certain design elements and features from the iPhone and IPad and used them in its line of Galaxy phones and tablets.

A jury awarded Apple $1 billion in 2012, finding that Samsung had used Apple's patented tap-to-zoom technology, but the court subsequently reduced the damages.

Further, "the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office found some of Apple's patents to be invalid," noted Samsung spokesperson Danielle Meister Cohen.

"We are disappointed that the court has agreed to proceed with Apple's grossly exaggerated claims regardless of whether the patents are valid," she added.

"While we've agreed to pay Apple, we remain confident that our products do not infringe on Apple's design patents," Cohen maintained, "and we will continue to take all appropriate measures within the legal system to protect our products and intellectual property."

Samsung has a deadline to meet in mid-December over whether to take the part of the case that dealt with design patents to the U.S. Supreme Court, according to patent expert Florian Mueller.

"That one will raise an issue that stands a reasonably good chance of being heard by the Supreme Court," he told the E-Commerce Times, "and further down the road, if Apple's pinch-to-zoom related patent is declared invalid after all the appeals have been exhausted, Samsung might seek a refund as well."

A Legal Mess

The case has dragged on way too long, with the legal melodrama beginning to overtake the essential facts being argued, suggested William Stofega, mobile analyst at IDG.

"For all the time and money [Apple] has put forth, they haven't gotten a lot back," he said. "It's starting to look like a pyrrhic victory."

On the other hand is the argument that the dispute cuts to the heart of U.S. patent law.

The framers of the Constitution afforded inventors exclusive rights to their inventions, observed Alexander Poltorak, CEO of General Patent.

Apple contended all along that Samsung stole patented design elements and features of the iPhone, and the court initially issued a permanent injunction, he pointed out.

However, an appellate court overturned it.

"This raised the question about the very nature of our patent system," Poltorak told the E-Commerce Times. "If a patent is no longer the right to exclude, what is it? Are we moving away from the traditional U.S. patent regime with strong exclusionary right, as mandated by our Constitution, to the European-style compulsory license regime?"

Evidence in the case clearly showed that Samsung violated Apple's patent, so the appeal essentially will deal with the fairness of the damages, said Peter Vogel, a patent attorney with Gardere Wynne Sewell.

"I think Samsung realizes the likelihood that they will lose the current case on appeal," he told the E-Commerce Times, "since the only real debate is that the damages Apple won are too high."

David Jones is a freelance writer based in Essex County, New Jersey. He has written for Reuters, Bloomberg, Crain's New York Business and The New York Times.

high tech news Samsung Grudgingly Agrees to Write Apple a $548M Check technology news

Samsung Grudgingly Agrees to Write Apple a $548M Check

9:19 AM

Samsung and Apple last week filed a court document indicating the companies had come to an agreement under which Samsung will pay A...