Tech News of the Week
Apple moves into the Buy Now Pay Later market
…Now it is possible to Buy Now Pay Later on Apple pay (with an interest free feature) – the service is called Apple Pay Later. It lets customers split a purchase into four equal payments over six weeks, with no interest or fees to pay. This is more than meets the eye, says This Week In Start Ups. The offering appears to depend on the Mastercard platform, not on the service provider making arrangements on a merchant by merchant basis (eg. Klarna, Affirm). If true, it means that, provided you have an iPhone, (which requires you to have iPhone, which tends to be the wealthier portion of the population with buying power) you can benefit from the BNPL service – meaning Apple can capitalise on the ready-made wide client-base not available to most BNPL service providers. This is the first advantage Apple has over incumbents. Second, Apple also has the edge as a service provider as it has enough cash to fund the loan, unlike others which might need to secure a facility with banks and pay interest on them (especially now as interest rates are being ratcheted up).
The success of BNPL service will prove to bear the following benefits to Apple:
- Locks in users to iPhone, bringing more revenues as users upgrade their iPhones
- Scope for more revenues from in-app purchases
- More data – in particular critical data (meaning it indicates what users are really interested in – interested enough to make a purchase, rather than simply pressing a “like” button which has a lower hurdle).
Affirm and Klarna have been experiencing squeezes in their profits as users have found it increasingly difficult to pay back the loan thanks to the rise in inflation. The Third Advantage that Apple potentially has is the ability to carry out better eligibility checks armed with the rich data source it has against users – whether that is allowed is a separate question, certainly with the coming into force of the Digital Markets Act.
Indonesia’s biggest start up GoTo joins the BNPL market
…it boasted that all its 100 million users were a target for its service, GoPayLater.
Artificial Intelligence
US Copyright Office sued by Stephen Thaler, maker of creativity machine for rejecting an application to register an artwork generated by the machine for copyright protection
…Stephen Thaler is well known in IP circles for mounting a worldwide campaign to register a patent covering technology which was invented by his AI machine called Dabus. This time round, his creativity machine is claimed to have “authored” a piece of art, called “A Recent Entrance to Paradise”, for which he has attempted to register for copyright. The Copyright Office had refused the application stating that the work did not have the human authorship necessary to support a copyright claim. According to Thaler, the decision contravenes US Copyright law arguing that at no point does the law limit authorship to natural persons.
BigTech/ Data / Platforms
Amazon not liable for trade mark infringement by offering third party products which are counterfeits says Advocate General of the top EU Court
…The Advocate General of the Court of Justice of the European Union (CJEU) advises the CJEU to rule that Amazon is not liable for trade mark infringement where the third party seller on the eCommerce site happens to sell counterfeit goods. CJEU may not follow the AG’s advice although it often does.
Louboutin is the owner of a trade mark for footwear with red outer soles. The Amazon websites regularly display advertisements for red-soled shoes, which are not Louboutin. Louboutin claimed that Amazon is liable for TM infringement because it has used a sign that is identical to the trade mark, emphasising in particular that the advertisements at issue form an integral part of Amazon’s commercial communication.
According to the AG, it is settled case-law of the Court that the act of use by an internet intermediary presupposes, ‘at the very least, that that third party uses the sign in its own commercial communication. The AG considers that the key question is whether the users of Amazon website makes a specific link between the intermediary (ie: Amazon) and the sign in question (products bearing the red soles) such that the communication is taken to be an integral part of Amazon’s commercial communication. AG considers that the perception of the user, which is reasonably well-informed and reasonably observant should be taken into account when determining whether a sign is used in the commercial communication of the operator of that platform. According to the AG, it was material that Amazon always specified, in the advertisements, whether the goods are sold by third-party sellers or sold directly by Amazon. Taken together, the AG’s considers that the operator of an online platform such as Amazon is not using the sign (here, products bearing red soles). Note what the user of Amazon’s eCommerce site perceives is a question of fact that ought to be decided by the referring Court in any event.
At present the position is slightly different in the case of copyright. Article 17 of the Directive on Copyright in the Digital Single Market states that, in a nutshell, online-sharing service providers must make “best efforts” to ensure that copyright infringing materials on their platforms are minimised (albeit, even in the case of copyright, there is no general monitoring obligation). The Digital Services Act, once it comes into force, will impose duties on large platforms such as Amazon to carry out assessments to minimise counterfeit products that may end up on their platform.
As Musk tries to backtrack from purchasing Twitter for approx. $40billion, Texas demands to investigate Twitter for under-reporting on the number of fake accounts in its financial regulatory filings
…Note that Texas is where Musk lives and where he has located his giga factory.
The Texan Attorney General claims that Twitter may have under-reported the number of fake accounts in violation of Texas’ Deceptive Trade Practices Act. Twitter had stated that fewer than 5% of its users are bots but apparently the actual number could be as much as 20%. The number of fake accounts will affect the value of Twitter; the higher the proportion of real users, the more advertising revenue it can expect to have because more advertisers would be prepared to spend on advertising on Twitter.
If Twitter is found to be in breach, it may help Musk walk away from the deal on the grounds of material adverse effect.
EV
Volvo uses Unreal Engine to display photorealistic in-car graphics in their new models
…Unreal Engine is one of the mainstream graphics engines, created by Epic games. The tool is being planned for use in Volvo’s infotainment systems as well. The task at hand, which is to produce high resolution car graphics, is a relatively easy job for Unreal Engine which is used for creating real-time 3D models of much harder graphics such as people / avatars and monsters.
Unreal Engine software enables developers/digital artists to create games with high fidelity graphics without knowledge of any code. Unity is the other mainstream tool that developers might use. Both have features /graphics that developers can implement, so they can create images and generate effects of their own choosing. Other than gaming / virtual reality platforms, these graphics engines have been used in films, architecture, engineering, construction and other simulations.
Fintech
African Group to buy US Fintech company Global Technology Partners
…The purchase will enable MFS Africa to provide prepaid cards to clients, which it is said would enable African users to buy services from International businesses such as Netflix and Amazon. The deal follows others as reported by the FT:
- Partnership between Kenya’s Safaricom (mobile money part owned by Vodafone) and Visa
- Silicon Valley fintech provider Stripe’s acquisition of Nigeria’s Paystack
- Tiger-Global led funding for Flutterwave, a Nigerian payments processor.
Africa (and India) are the next regions which are expected to grow rapidly.
Life Sciences
UK based start up Angle receives US regulatory clearance for its cancer diagnostic kit
…Angle’s kit captures live cancer cells in the blood, and analyses the gene mutations and expressions to enable clinicians to formulate a personalised drug formula to increase the effectiveness of expensive cancer treatment. It is said that the kit which can analyse the cancer quickly might be critical because cancers can change in nature over time.
Patents
Ad supported content patent litigation between Firtiva and Sony settle before trial in Eastern District of Texas
…The patent covered a way of sponsoring content without interrupting streaming by getting consumers to accept direct emails from the sponsor.
Telecoms
Facebook, Qualcomm and Intel say to US FCC (Federation Communications Commission) that 60GHz band should be shared with radar and communication use
… Both communications and radar interests are focused on the lower 7 GHz of the 60 GHz band because the 57-64 GHz range is generally available globally for unlicensed applications, making it critically important that it be shared fairly by both types of applications. The companies explained that this proposal allows fair access to the band by radars and communications applications. There is no question that the 60 GHz band will be key for AR/VR/XR/MR and other real-time audiovisual applications. When latency is impacted, the display can freeze momentarily and flicker, leading to a poor user experience and, in some cases, motion sickness, the letter stated.
What is AR/VR/XR/MR?
AR stands for Augmented Reality. AR devices such as smart glasses enhance users’ surroundings, projecting new information on top of what they are already seeing.
VR stands for Virtual Reality. VR headsets obscure the user’s vision, replacing it with a virtual environment beamed through in-built screens.
XR stands for Extended Reality. XR is an umbrella term encapsulating Augmented Reality (AR), Virtual Reality (VR), Mixed Reality (MR), and everything in between. Many companies consider that XR is the next mobile computing platform. Qualcomm’s presentation gives a good visual explanation of its own vision of XR.
MR stands for Mixed Reality. The term can be used to describe VR and AR. Sometimes, it is used to describe a device where you have an out-ward facing video camera so the real world can be blended with the virtual (called “pass through”) – you do not see the real world direct as in AR, but the processed videoed images.
FCC is lobbied for spectrum sharing between 5G and Non-geostationary (NGSO) satellites
…competition for bandwidths have always been fierce. SpaceX, which provides internet services from Starlink, its satellite internet constellation, has been opposing the sharing of the 12GHz spectrum (12.2-12.7 GHz) with 5G wireless, on the grounds of interference. Other companies, such as RS Access and Dish have said that there was no such concern based on simulation studies.
Delving Deeper
New form of Patent Pool – IPwe
…Patent litigation is rife against businesses that sell highly technical products as every feature from the visible to the invisible are likely heavily patented. Apple, which is one of the largest sellers of mobile handsets are often a target of patent owners that have to do with telecommunication, for example. Clearly Apple’s products fall within patents that concern telecommunications, and there are great many such patents, owned by many different patent owners, and a deep pocketed company like Apple has been a defendant of patent litigation advanced by telecommunication patent owners. The number of handset makers, which necessarily implement telecommunication technology are not many, but that will change when IoT devices, which can communicate with all manner of other devices, begin to fill the market. Those devices too, will also infringe, but it would be difficult for all wireless communication patent owners to negotiate a licence with a legion of businesses which make a wide range of different connected devices. In such a case, patent pools might be useful where the variety of patent owners contribute their own patents into a pool, and an administrator of the patent pool collect licence fees from a number of different businesses that sell IoT devices on the patent owners’ behalf. The concept is not that dissimilar to royalty collection societies that represent copyright owners of music and the like. Patent pools have been around for years.
IPwe is not just a patent pool though, it is a smart pool. It licences pools of patents that have to do with new technologies such as LiDAR (used by cars), metaverse and blockchain. As is usual in a patent pool, patents in each of these pools are owned by a variety of businesses. The key with IPwe is that it uses AI and blockchain technologies such as NFTs to operate the patent pool:
- In order to work out the share of licensing revenues paid out to each of the patent owners that have contributed their patents into the pool, it uses an open source algorithm which analyses those patents and evaluates them. The distinguishing factor is that the pool does not allocate the licensing revenue depending on the number of patents contributed, but it looks at the value of patents themselves and takes account of them to evaluate the fair share. It is widely accepted that some patents cover more important technology than others. Without AI, evaluation of patents is very labour intensive involving many hours’ work of a large team of highly technical personnel. Should the algorithm be fit for purpose, it can massively cut down on the time and cost to set up the pool. IPwe says that the algorithm must be working well, for it has accumulated a number of patent owners wishing to join the pool in a short space of time.
- IPwe has successfully persuaded SMEs with pioneering technology to contribute its patents, by not having an entry fee to join the pool. It also offers a non-negotiable standardised licence with a SME friendly fee structure.
- Use of NFTs attributed to licensed patents. The NFT contains information about ownership, transaction history, file history, information about the patents and on occasion, know-how. Thus, a licence can contain rights other than patent rights. This structure also expedites the due diligence process, particularly in the event of deal making.