Three weeks after HEVC Advance announced it was scrapping royalty fees on most H.265 content (see 1803140037), it welcomed 12 new members, the largest haul in its three years. They include four South Korean entities remaining in rival MPEG LA’s H.265 patent pool. Korean Broadcasting System is among three joining HEVC Advance as licensors only, as is Fraunhofer, Pete Moller, the patent pool’s CEO, emailed. Humax, another South Korean MPEG LA member, is joining as licensor and licensee, and the rest include GoPro and Western Digital, which come as licensees only, he said. "Widespread" adoption of the video compression standard is "accelerating,” the pool said Tuesday. Except for Fraunhofer, the new members were in place before the content fee cut, Moller said. “Many important companies [are] reaching out to talk that previously felt the content fees were too significant of a barrier,” said Moller. “Discussions in the best of situations take 3-6 months."
TVs imported from China would bear an especially heavy burden under the U.S. Trade Representative’s list of products targeted for 25 percent tariffs under President Donald Trump’s March 22 memorandum accusing the Chinese of unfair intellectual property practices (see 1803220043). CTA President Gary Shapiro called the administration wrong for having “singled out TVs as one of the largest proposed categories for a 25 percent tariff.” He urged "companies and consumers to take action, make their voices heard and tell the administration just how much damage this would do." Other industry players reacted negatively, and China plans to retaliate.
With “ever growing interest in digital media,” there's a “need to develop consumer-accessible technologies to further enhance the listening experience,” said a U.S. patent (9,930,463) Sonos landed last Tuesday. It describes methods of “defect detection via audio playback” in a multiroom home entertainment network, describing a company product for streaming within a household. A spokeswoman declined further comment Monday.
The Milo whole-home Wi-Fi distribution product that ParkerVision introduced in the fall continues to be a learn-as-one-goes experience for the loss-ridden tech company, said CEO Jeffrey Parker on a Thursday earnings call. ParkerVision launched Milo in mid-October through Amazon Prime and its own online store. “We learned where Milo is doing a great job for consumers” but also where it “needed to be tuned a bit to deliver” on how some customers want to use the product, said Parker. Milo qualified for Amazon Prime’s “fulfilled by seller program,” which allows ParkerVision to “reach out” to market the product to Amazon Prime customers, “while still able to keep costs down by fulfilling those orders from our own facilities rather than through an Amazon distribution center,” said Chief Financial Officer Cindy Poehlman. ParkerVision's stock risks a Nasdaq delisting because the company doesn't meet its $35 million minimum "market value of listed securities" and because its shares are trading below "the $1 minimum bid price requirement," she said. The company nevertheless is “now geared up and taking Milo to the next steps,” including marketing the product to internet service providers through a broad “direct sales campaign,” said Parker. It’s also “actively pursuing” a direct-to-consumer “channel partner” that's offering “to take Milo on a comprehensive direct national TV, radio, newspaper and PR campaign,” he said. “This is a firm that has decades of experience in taking consumer products right to market in very successful campaigns.” The company’s goal is “to launch on air with them in late spring to early summer this year,” he said.
Various models of Samsung Galaxy smartphones have rear-camera glass lens covers that are prone to “spontaneously shatter within a few weeks of purchase,” alleged a complaint (in Pacer) filed Tuesday in U.S. District Court in San Francisco. The “defect is common” on Galaxy S7- and S8-series and Note 8 phones and is “known to Samsung, as Samsung has received countless complaints about it,” said the filing, which seeks class-action status. “But Samsung continues to hide this defect from consumers and has refused to repair it even when covered under its warranty.” That leaves consumers with devices “on which the camera -- an integral part of a smartphone’s functionality -- is unusable,” it said. The glass shatters “without any external force applied,” and does so “in a telltale circular pattern as if it had been shot out by a BB gun,” said the complaint. Consumers “have suffered injury in fact and incurred fees and costs” associated with the defect, it said. “Without a repair or a refund from Samsung, consumers are left with limited options. To replace one of these devices at retail price costs several hundred dollars.” Even if a consumer bought insurance on the defective phone, replacing it “requires paying a deductible that may be between $175 and $250,” it said. The complaint was reassigned Wednesday to a U.S. district judge in Oakland, California, after plaintiffs Lynette Pang and Timo Masalin declined (in Pacer) their consent to have the case go before a magistrate judge in San Francisco. Opting not to have a complaint heard before a magistrate judge is "common practice in these kinds of cases," Michael Woerner, a lawyer for Pang and Masalin, emailed us Wednesday. Samsung didn’t comment.
High-end smartphones shown at Mobile World Congress with larger 4K displays, multiple high-resolution cameras and 4K HDR recording are boosting memory and storage "requirements,” said Micron Technology CEO Sanjay Mehrotra on an earnings call. OEMs are “building new artificial intelligence, augmented reality and lifelike virtual reality capabilities into high-end smartphones, including facial and voice recognition, real-time translation, fast image search and scene detection,” he said. Such products are migrating toward 6 GB of low-power DRAM components, he said. The average storage capacity of solid-state drives also is increasing “across all smartphone classes with new flagship models using 64 gigabytes of flash memory at a minimum,” he said.
U.S. Trade Representative Robert Lighthizer filed a “request for consultations” at the World Trade Organization to “address China’s discriminatory technology licensing requirements,” said his office Friday. President Donald Trump’s memorandum proposing 25 percent tariffs on about $60 billion worth of Chinese goods imported to the U.S. directed Lighthizer to address “China’s discriminatory technology licensing practices” through a WTO “dispute proceeding” (see 1803220043). The consultations request was the first step in that process, Lighthizer's office said.
President Donald Trump’s signing of a memorandum Thursday proposing tariffs on about $60 billion worth of Chinese goods imported to the U.S. didn’t detail for now which specific products would be targeted. But CTA President Gary Shapiro wasted little time in warning the tariffs would threaten to put “a new tax on U.S. businesses” and force consumers “to pay dramatically more to access the technology products they need.”
Facebook has “responsibility to protect your data, and if we can't then we don't deserve to serve you,” posted CEO Mark Zuckerberg in his first known public comments on allegations that political data analytics firm Cambridge Analytica misused private information of more than 50 million Americans on behalf of President Donald Trump's 2016 election campaign (see 1803200047). Zuckerberg has been “working to understand exactly what happened and how to make sure this doesn't happen again,” he said. “The most important actions to prevent this from happening again today we have already taken years ago. But we also made mistakes, there's more to do, and we need to step up.” As founder, “at the end of the day I'm responsible for what happens on our platform,” said Zuckerberg. “I'm serious about doing what it takes to protect our community. While this specific issue involving Cambridge Analytica should no longer happen with new apps today, that doesn't change what happened in the past. We will learn from this experience to secure our platform further and make our community safer for everyone.”
The UHD Alliance landed a trademark registration certification Tuesday for one of three versions of its Ultra HD Premium certification logo for devices and content with 4K resolution, HDR and wide color gamut, Patent and Trademark Office records show. In November, PTO examiners ordered the alliance to submit a copy “of the standards used to determine who is authorized to use the certification mark.” The alliance responded Jan. 18, linking to “regulations governing the use” of Ultra HD Premium that previously weren’t public. Though no certified content is listed at ExperienceUHD.com, five studios are "utilizing the Ultra HD Premium logo on their 4K Ultra HD Blu-ray movies with an increased level of releases occurring throughout the coming year," said alliance President Mike Fidler.