May 2004 Archives

By Judy Siegel-Itzkovich

Few Israelis are Einsteins, but the great Jewish physicist, who was hired as a Swiss patent clerk a century ago and who later turned down an offer to be Israel's president, would surely have been pleased by Israeli inventiveness.

In 2002, the country's citizens registered 1,046 patents in the US, or 174 per million residents. This figure puts Israel third in the world, behind only the US and Japan, in per capita figures, nearly three times the British number, and quite a bit ahead of Germany.

by Raphael Minder

At the opening of a global congress on combating counterfeiting in Brussels, Ronald Noble, secretary-general of the international police organisation, said that counterfeiting was, at best, "on the radar screen of a few countries". He added: "What I find absolutely amazing is that this is a multi-billion dollar problem that affects the safety of people, the security of governments, that is connected to organised crime, drug trafficking and terrorism . . . and nobody pressures me to say what I'm doing about this problem. There is no pressure to produce results."

Noble's complaint was echoed by other participants. Michel Danet, secretary-general of the World Customs Organisation, said that "we don't have a mandate" to stop counterfeiting. "We have a patchwork, which has holes in it."

Josh Wolfe, Forbes/Wolfe Nanotech Report

As the casualty count rises in Iraq, the safety of our soldiers is paramount in the minds of defense researchers. Nowhere is that more evident than at the Institute for Soldier Nanotechnologies, established at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology in 2002 with a five-year, $50 million grant from the U.S. Army.

The ISN is a unique undertaking. It pulls together 44 MIT faculty and more than 100 students and postdoctoral researchers to interact with the Army and industrial partners. The ISN officially opened its doors last May, and I expect that this new incubator will bring important lifesaving improvements to military science. It's all part of the Army's Objective Force Warrior (OFW) program, which recognizes that despite developments in weapons, tanks and planes, a soldier's uniform essentially hasn't changed in the last 100 years.

By Jane Bussey

In a rare meeting with members of the U.S. Congress that ended Tuesday, Caribbean trade ministers called for commercial ties that would offer ''mutual benefits'' to their small economies and the United States.

Trade and security issues topped the agenda of the two-day talks between the Caribbean Congressional Caucus and trade officials from the Caribbean Community (Caricom). The closed-door meeting, arranged by the Inter-American Economic Council in Washington, was held in Miami's Four Seasons Hotel.

''I called for enhancement of the economic partnership of the United States and the Caribbean and said it must be based on our interdependence and mutual benefits,'' said Richard Bernal, the top trade negotiator for Caricom.

By Andrew James Laycock

Abstract At this moment, 3,155,687 people are connected to one peer-to-peer Internet file-sharing network. These users are sharing 599,456,456 files, nearly 90% of which contain compressed digital music in the form of MP3. The artists and companies who own the copyright for these musical works did not allow the files to be shared, nor will they profit directly from the uploading and downloading of these files. The files can be listened to on a user's computer, transferred to a portable device, or copied onto a CD and played in a normal CD player.

File-sharing's power lies in its scale. Virtually any commercial recording by any recording artist is available. The range of material is so comprehensive because anyone can contribute. The only comparison that can be made is with the World Wide Web - a seemingly limitless virtual structure of text and imagery. File-sharing offers a vast pool of multimedia content.

by Dan Warne

SIMON Richardson, the technical and communications manager at Mercy Health and Aged Care, thought he had spyware under control. At a cost of $22,000 annually, he'd purchased WebSense internet monitoring for a company internet gateway, blocking spyware from being downloaded into company PCs.

"That was until a puzzling case of one of our laptops recently coming back loaded with spyware," he says.

"We realised staff were taking laptops home and connecting them to their home broadband, outside our filtered internet environment. That's how the spyware got in."

By Paul Foy, Associated Press

SALT LAKE CITY — When Utah technology executive Darl McBride sniffs Linux, the free computer operating system, he picks up a scent of Unix, a long-established business system he maintains made Linux sturdy and reliable.
McBride is chief executive of The SCO Group, which acquired rights to Unix through a series of corporate acquisitions and mergers. SCO sued IBM for dumping allegedly confidential Unix code into Linux and sued DaimlerChrysler and AutoZone for deploying Linux systems without an SCO license.

The suits sent a shudder through the open-source movement and threaten to literally unravel Linux as it gains commercial acceptance and market share on Microsoft. It also exposed a gaping liability of Linux, a work of thousands of hackers whose contributions of software code may be original — or not.

By Kim Tae-gyu

South Korea’s mobile handset manufacturers are reaching deep into their pockets to boost research and development (R&D) in an effort to survive stiff competition at home and abroad.

Industry sources on Friday said Korea’s major cell phone makers _ Samsung Electronics, LG Electronics and Pantech Group _ each seeks to increase its R&D workforce by more than 35 percent this year.

by Rachel Ross

Microsoft Corp. claims it's not to blame for the majority of computer crashes and the company wants to reach out to those it says are responsible.

Scott Charney, Microsoft's chief trustworthy-computing strategist, said the software giant is committed to working with smaller software vendors who actually cause most of the problems.

"One of the things that we've found — which actually surprised us a bit — was that more than half of all computer crashes were not due to Microsoft code," said Charney, in Toronto yesterday talking to Microsoft customers and partners about security.

By Khalid Mustafa

ISLAMABAD: Pakistan has sought technical assistance from the US for the implementation of the Intellectual Property Rights (IPRs) regime, a senior official told Daily Times on Monday.

The official privy to the meeting between Commerce Minister Humayun Akhtar Khan and US Undersecretary for Industry and Security Kenneth I Juster said the US raised the issue of the slow pace of implementation of the IPRs due to which US companies were losing money.

by Dr. Kamil Idris, Director General of the World Intellectual Property Organization

Today, the international intellectual property system has evolved into a strategic policy instrument for stimulating economic growth, promoting social well-being and securing sustainable development. The IP system has a key role to play in wealth creation and improved social well-being in all countries. Increasingly, economic trends indicate that a nation`s ability to generate wealth and protect its cultural heritage depends on its adoption and use of the IP system. The World Intellectual Property Organization, one of the specialized agencies of the United Nations, is at the forefront of efforts to ensure that the rights of creators and owners of intellectual property rights are recognized, rewarded and protected worldwide and that such rights are used in support of economic and technological development. the benefits of the international intellectual property system are extended to all member states.

By Jay Wrolstad Enterprise Security Today

Hackers infiltrated Cisco's corporate network and stole some 800 MB of source code for IOS 12.3 and 12.3t, reports Russian firm SecurityLab. IOS 12.3 is the latest iteration of a massive program that operates an array of the company's products, which dominate the networking industry.

Cisco Systems is investigating the alleged theft of its networking-gear source code, which initially was reported late last week on a Web site run by the Russian firm SecurityLab.

TOKYO — Sixty-eight new law schools opened across Japan in April to train legal professionals in a move partially designed to boost the number of lawyers in the country.

A total of 5,590 people enrolled at the schools set up at various universities.

They include doctors, public service employees, office workers and young people fresh out of university.

Specialized in educating those interested in becoming judges, prosecutors and lawyers, the new law schools offer two- and three-year courses with the former for holders of bachelor's degrees in law and the latter for those holding degrees in other subjects such as literature.

By David Legard

Vietnamese authorities raided the premises of three of the country's largest computer assemblers in the capital Hanoi on Wednesday, discovering large amounts of pirated software on the premises, according to a government statement.

This is the most public move made so far against software piracy in Vietnam, which is rated by the Business Software Association (BSA) as having the worst piracy record in the world.

By William New

A series of government experts on Tuesday addressed problems and opportunities facing businesses that provide security technologies to the government for domestic and overseas anti-terrorism activities.

Those issues include liability for technologies that fail to prevent attacks, intellectual property protection, the sharing of confidential company information with the government, information security and the ability of technologies to communicate with each other.

Article by Baila H Celedonia

Introduction

Many intellectual property lawyers believe that the entire subject of secured transactions1 does not concern them. Whether that was ever true, such a belief could be disastrous today. There has been a growing acknowledgement over the last few years among lenders and investment bankers that a company's intellectual property is often its most valuable asset. This is so not just for high tech companies with their portfolios of patents or computer software developers with software copyrights and patents, but equally for entertainment and publishing companies, whose copyrights are at the heart of their businesses. For consumer product companies -- high tech or low -- their trademarks are often their single most valuable asset.

by Judith Mbuya

Position: Executive director, Cyber Security Industry Alliance, a public policy advocacy group composed of security software, hardware and service vendors that addresses key cyber-security issues.

Career highlights: Special assistant to the president and senior director for Critical Infrastructure Protection, White House Homeland Security Council; senior director, Office of Cyberspace Security and member of the president's Critical Infrastructure Protection Board, White House National Security Council; director of counter-terrorism, National Security Council; foreign affairs officer, Bureau of Nonproliferation, State Department; political advisor, Operation Provide Comfort, State Department; and, science attaché, State Department.

By Robyn Weisman

MacNewsWorld presents a rumble in the Silicon Jungle -- May 7th through May 14th -- a six-round Mac Death Match in which Mac Observer editor-in-chief Bryan Chaffin and the always-controversial industry analyst Rob Enderle square off on today's key Mac issues.

In today's media-drenched culture, few things generate more buzz than celebrity defendents, reality-show contestants and -- Macs.

Why does the Macintosh whip up such passion from both its adherents and detractors? How has Apple Computer, a company that produces just a miniscule percentage of the world's PCs, become such a cultural force? Why does the iPod Mini elicit the sorts of oohs, aahs and omigods customarily reserved for Brad Pitt and Jennifer Lopez?

By: Charles Farrar

The adult Internet's challenge to Acacia Research Corp.'s streaming media patent claims has just acquired what may be its most visible partner - adult gigastar Jenna Jameson, whose activities include a popular Web operating and marketing company, has joined the challenge.

Jameson said May 6 that she wants to help fight what she called Acacia's "strong-arm tactics, which effectively want to put a tax on every single person using the Internet for video-on-demand services, Internet radio, pay-per-view movies, video news clips from sites like CNN.com, and even songs from iTunes or Amazon.com."

Northern Ireland crime gangs are increasingly developing international links as a means of funding their criminal networks, a British government minister warned today.

Ian Pearson, Britain's Security Minister and Chairman of the UK Organised Crime Task Force, highlighted at an international crime conference in Belfast that trade in counterfeit goods was increasingly funding terrorist campaigns, not just in Northern Ireland but across the world.

He said: “Whilst a high percentage of counterfeit products appearing in the marketplace in Northern Ireland are manufactured on a large scale locally, it is known that top level organised criminal gangs are increasingly developing international links and sourcing their products overseas.”

Above the Crowd by J. William Gurley

"I think it's time
That you found what the world is waiting for
I think it's time
To get real."
-Stone Roses, What the World is Waiting For

It is quite bizarre to see John Kerry, Pat Buchanan, and Ross Perot all on the same side of a political issue. Of course, regular Above The Crowd readers might find it equally bizarre to be reading about politics in this newsletter. However, one recent political issue directly threatens the high-tech community. Economic protectionism, the mandate that strangely ties the above three gentlemen together, suggests that in order to protect jobs in America, the government should put up barriers to free trade that "advantage" the American worker over others. If implemented, a protectionist policy will have a profoundly negative affect on high-tech startups, entrepreneurialism, and innovation.

Knowledge@Wharton

Those who have been following the controversy over "offshoring" U.S. service jobs to low-cost markets like India now have new developments to consider: The takeover this month by U.S. business giants -- IBM and Citigroup -- of two major providers of business process outsourcing (BPO) services in India. On April 7, IBM bought Daksh e-services, the country's third largest back-office services firm based in Gurgaon, near New Delhi, for between $150 million and $200 million. Five days later, Citigroup consolidated its ownership of e-Serve International, a Mumbai-based company. Citigroup agreed to pay $126 million for 56% of E-Serve from the latter's promoters; it already owned the other 44% through a subsidiary.

By Dean Takahashi

Following the trail of an electronics counterfeiter takes a lot of work. Just ask Advanced Micro Devices Inc.

Last fall, AMD conducted some raids in Europe, where it had found that some of its microprocessors, which can sell for an average price of $100, were being remarked. That is, the low-speed, low-priced microprocessors were being re-labeled as high-speed, high-priced chips.

The company found a connection to some resellers in Shenzhen, China, and sent an undercover agent to purchase some microprocessors at one of the shops. It analyzed the chips and found they were fakes.

By John Borland

Microsoft has released details of a long-delayed update to its content protection technology, offering new features aimed at bringing piracy-proof digital content to mobile devices and home networks.

Originally expected as long as a year ago, the technology--internally code-named Janus--has been seen as a potential way to let subscription music services such as Napster and RealNetworks' Rhapsody move to portable MP3 players. Those services, which allow subscribers to listen to unlimited amounts of music in return for a single monthly fee, are typically tied to PCs today.

The Director General of the World Intellectual Property Organization (WIPO), Dr. Kamil Idris, marking World Intellectual Property Day on April 26, said that all nations can use the intellectual property system to achieve economic growth and cultural development. The theme of this year’s day, "Encouraging Creativity", underlines how human creativity drives advances in science, business, technology, and the arts. Dr. Idris pledged WIPO’s commitment to continue to work with all societies to assist them in developing their intellectual property systems to promote economic growth and social well-being.

To mark the occasion, the Director General of WIPO, Dr. Kamil Idris, released the following message:

by Mary Swire

Speaking on Monday at a ceremony celebrating World Intellectual Property Day, Hong Kong's Secretary for Commerce, Industry & Technology, John Tsang stressed the importance of IP development and protection to the territory's economy.

"Intellectual property (trademarks, patents for inventions, designs and copyright works) is an essential element in protecting the fruits of technological innovation, investment in research and innovative manufacturing processes," he told those attenting the ceremony, continuing:

"Unless intellectual property rights are properly protected, innovators and creators will not be fairly rewarded for their investment in research and development. The recognition and protection of intellectual property rights is therefore essential for the sustainability and prosperity of Hong Kong's creative industries."