Ecommerce-Blog

If you live near the sea, chances are high that your home is built over sandy soil. And if an earthquake strikes, deep and sandy soils can turn to liquid, with some disastrous consequences for the buildings sitting on them. But now, U.S. researchers have found a way to use bacteria to steady buildings against earthquakes by turning these sandy soils into rocks. Today, it is possible to inject chemicals in the ground to reinforce it, but this can have toxic effects on soil and water. On the contrary, this use of common bacteria to cement sands has no harmful effects on the environment. But so far, this method is limited to labs and the researchers are working on scaling...

MySpace and Facebook are typically categorized together as “social networking” Websites. Facebook, however, makes a clear distinction between its business and that of MySpace. I chatted with Dan Rose, Vice President, about the Facebook business model at the recent Media Summit in New York City, He underscored to me that Facebook considers itself a technology business, not a media business. Facebook views MySpace as an open “media portal,” while Facebook considers itself a technology platform enabling communication and interaction among networks of trusted friends (see Facebook: ‘technology business, not media business’”).Rose put forth that just as people regularly check their email, Facebookers regularly check their Facebook profile for the latest "news.”Is Facebook vs. MySpace simply an issue...

If you shop for a real estate marketing tool to take your business to the next level, you are going to be disappointed. Real estate marketing starts with great services and big ideas. The "tools" are just a way to communicate those services and ideas to your audience.

Companies are adopting blogging, podcasting and other social media as business tools.

Use this questionnaire to diagnose your marketing and business development needs. Then assign a simple formula and rating system to fix it.

Use this questionnaire to diagnose your marketing and business development needs. Then assign a simple formula and rating system to fix it.

How do you write a good headline? Actually, it is not as hard as you think. In fact, decades of research has been done on advertisements to see which headlines generate the most leads and sales and here is a summary of what works...

Marketing, publicity and promotion are all essential elements in your business tool kit. But they are not interchangeable. Here is the difference you need to know.

I’m revisiting Microsoft’s Genuine Advantage program this week, in light of the introduction of a new WGA Notifications tool for Windows XP and Windows Server 2003. (Microsoft’s official description is here; the download page is here.) As background, I thought it might be interesting to post a brief history of how Microsoft’s anti-piracy programs have evolved through the generations. This post is mainly just a factual recitation. Ill refer back to it in the follow-up posts where I analyze the effects of these and other, related changes in Microsoft software over the years. Note: I believe that all of the details in this post are accurate, but Im continuing to research the topic and plan to post additions, updates, and...

A study by online market research firm Compete Inc suggests that consumers wont be willing to pay $500 for Apples upcoming iPhone and that in order to get users to switch to AT&T the price will have to come down dramatically. Heres what this uncommissioned study found. 26 percent of the interested respondents said that they were likely to buy an iPhone, but only 1 percent said that they would be willing to pay $500. The number of interested parties increased to forty-two percent if the price dropped to between $200 and $299.[poll=93]Im not statistician but the fact that Compete Inc only quizzed 379 people seems like a flaw to me. A sample of...

NASA is now providing some interesting KML files that add near real-time overlays to Google Earth. The information they are using comes from MODIS (Moderate-resolution Imaging Spectroradiometer) -- some data from this source (updated daily) can be viewed on Google Earth by clicking here. One example of the new data is temperature maps [KML]. This overlay shows a graphically pleasing representation of temperature for large bodies of water around the globe -- the colors remind me of Google Mars.In addition to sea temperatures, NASA is also now providing near real-time information for global chlorophyll levels, cloud fraction and snow cover. Even though I probably will not use this information in real life, this information about sea temperature, chlorophyll...

Vinnie Mirchandani has some fun in a blog post applying a technology twist to the revealing and often humorous "two cows" question, such as how political systems or corporations are different from one another (Communism: You have two cows. The government takes both of them and gives you a share of the milk). Here are a few of his gems: AT&TYou have two cows. You sell one, and force the other to produce the milk of four cows. Then you hire a consultant to analyze why the cow drops dead. You re-purchase the other and hire other consultants to rename it. GOOGLEYou have one cow. You sell one inch squares on the cow as advertising space. You are considering tearing...

Edition number 25 in this Digital Markets Blog presidential campaign 2008 series on what I am calling “User Generated Politics”Barack Obama made a $1.3 million dollar star-studded Hollywood fundraising splash in California earlier this week, as I recount in "Barack Obama million dollar star in Hollywood” and "“Got $2500? Mingle with Obama, plus Spielberg, Katzenberg and Geffen.”Hillary Clinton also sojurned to California, and met with stars in the techonogy arena. Presidential candidate Clinton was welcomed to the Mountain View Googleplex, by CEO Eric Schmidt.Would President Hillary Clinton be a friend to technology? Who knows!The Clinton campaign Website presents no position papers on anything, let alone technology. Clinton offers transcripts of a few speeches, but a stream of campaign press releases...

Salesforce.coms big enterprise customer that will be announced Tuesday is apparently Merrill Lynch. BusinessWeek reports in its latest issue (subscription required) that Salesforce.com CEO Marc Benioff is looking to take on Bloomberg. For the non-Wall Street types Bloomberg provides a box much like a PC that pumps financial information and real-time tools into bond and stock trading houses. On Wall Street Bloomberg terminals are everywhere. (And they are a bit addictive if you are a financial nerd.) Benioffs play, which was teased during Salesforce.coms earnings call, is to try to undercut Bloomberg, which charges $1,500 a month. BusinessWeek reports: Benioff...

Yes, I am serious, and there is a sociological lesson to be learned here.But first, some supportive information. There are plenty of accounts that would seem to point to Anna Nicole Smith (in that Getty images photo) as an enthusiastic Internet user and e-mailer.Take for instance "BIG MO," an Anna Nicole Smith bodyguard who appeared on Larry King Live last night.BIG MO said in part: "The media wouldnt let her grieve. She was someone that read her own press. No matter how much myself or Howard or any other people that was close to her tried to get her away from that computer, she would always read about these things..." (death of her son)Meanwhile, while BIG...

Effective with the end of yesterdays Nasdaq session, Vonages stock has been publicly traded for exactly one year.While it may be useful to discuss the steep drop in the stock price during the days and weeks immediatley following the IPO., a look at this chart provides evidence of some longer-term trend.Id call that trend regressive plateau-ing.Take a quick peek at the chart and then let me know if you agree with what I am seeing. What seems to be occuring is that per share, Vonage stock seems to decline to a certain level, hold that level for a couple of months,and then over a period of a few days or a week at most, land at a lower...

We've written in the past about the NFL's extremely aggressive stance on its trademark of the term Super Bowl. Basically the league has sought to forbid advertisers from saying things like "Get a new color TV in time for the Super Bowl!", so instead they have to use euphemisms like "The Big Game" instead. Of course, this is a total misuse of trademark law. The idea of trademarks isn't to give one entity total control, but rather it's to prevent confusion. So, for example, the law would prevent another football league from calling their championship game The Super Bowl. But advertisers may have to come up with some new euphemisms next year because now the NFL is seeking a trademark on "The Big Game" (via Hit & Run). The league's stance is already ridiculous, but this takes the cake. "The Big Game" isn't even something that the NFL came up with; it's a phrase that other people use to describe the Super Bowl. There's no justification for the NFL to control this term and then prevent others from using it. At least the NFL is trying to be careful not to overstep its bounds, as it says it has no intention of taking control over the word "game"... for now.

Politicians just love to come up with laws that make it look like they're doing something -- even if the laws are totally meaningless. Apparently, in New York, a law has been proposed that would make it a crime to sell or give a terrorist a domain name. As Eric Goldman points out on his site, this seems pretty ridiculous. It's certainly not going to stop any terrorists -- who you would have to imagine probably aren't going to register their latest .com domain under the official name of whatever terrorist organization will be using it. Furthermore, this should just make life difficult for any registrar. Most automatically process domain sales -- but now may have to waste time adding in some sort of middle step to make sure the registering organization isn't on a list of terrorist organizations. This seems like a total waste of time. If terrorists were actually registering domains under their real names and addresses, wouldn't that just make it easier to track them down?

Ever since stories of stock option wealth became fairly common, it opened up a tremendous new arena for scammers of all types to convince people they could "get in early" on certain stock deals. In some cases, these were run by out-and-out con men, such as people who pretended to work for VC firms, promising to get investors' money into hot private startups, or the guy who used "sophisticated Wall Street lingo" to convince people he could sell investors shares in Google stock prior to the company's IPO. However, at other times, it's really just naive entrepreneurs who don't realize you can't just sell parts of your company without jumping through a few legal hoops. It's not clear which camp the latest case falls into, but the operators of an adult website based in Colorado clearly were breaking securities law in offering to sell shares in the yet unincorporated company via ads in the local newspaper. Apparently, the ads were convincing enough that at least one person took the company up on its offer.

While the US government continues to do everything in its power to push out the highly lucrative online gambling industry, and turn everyone involved in it into criminals, other countries are eagerly embracing it. In the UK, the finance minister said that as part of the country's budgetary plans, it hopes to lure in online gambling firms, many of which are located in tax havens, like Gibraltar. Instead of charging them a typical corporate tax, they will only face a small 2-3% levy. Already, some internet casinos are eager to move. In addition to the bump in tax revenue that the country will see, the government should be in a better position to regulate the industry and protect gamblers from shady dealings. This is in contrast to the US, which, by pushing online gambling further underground, ensures that it will be less safe for American gamblers.

What message are you sending out to the public concerning your online presence? Are you to the right, the left or on the fence concerning the topics that you support or don't support?

The movie "The Secret" recently featured on Oprah and Larry King, promises that Aladdin's lamp is not just a story, but a scientific fact. What is the "secret" then to manifesting this abundance in business and in our marketing? Is there truly a "secret", or is it skill? Can anyone learn how to put "the secret" into practical application?

You shouldn't ever harrass your contacts (who will soon unsubscribe from your communications if you do), but connecting with them multiple times can help to move customers / clients from the "vaguely interested if I get time" state, to "yes, I really should investigate that", and finally to "okay, I will take action". Whereas just one communication may leave your contact in an "interested but too busy" state.

Do you have a strategic marketing plan and process? Are you satisfied with your marketing results? Have you taken time to review your marketing program and determine what barriers are preventing the achievement of a successful marketing program? I believe I know the answers to these questions from too many businesses today. I too often hear a resounding NO to each of the questions. What questions might you ask to define your marketing barriers? Here are ten (10) questions to help identify the barriers that stand between you and a successful marketing program.

Two simple words put together as "Thank you!" have awesome power that binds and builds relationships. Think of the times you received thanks verbally or in writing and you will have sensitivity to this power. "Thank you" confirms that something positive and special has happened and also provides the opportunity to return some very positive emotions back to the giver of thanks. So you are asking how can you benefit from this awesome power of thank you. Here are seven (7) tips on how to do that from your strategic thinking business coach.

There's been a lot of talk lately about "Wireless Net Neutrality", kicked off by Columbia professor Tim Wu's paper of the same name, as well as a petition Skype made to the FCC, following on many of his ideas. While some good points have been raised, overall, this "wireless net neutrality" push is a bit of a red herring. Net neutrality is a loaded term that's almost guaranteed to instantly raise people's blood pressure. But it's really a pretty poor term to use here. Wu raises some good points, but much of his paper is undermined by some misunderstandings of the market, and a failure to realize that the highly competitive mobile market is already moving toward openness, so any neutrality regulations would be premature and unnecessary. Click through to the full entry to get the more detailed explanation.

Do you practice strategic thinking in your marketing efforts? Do you develop client-retention strategies, in addition to strategies to gain new clients? If you answered NO to these questions, you may want to rethink the way you are doing your marketing. My experience indicates that a strategic approach to client retention is underutilized and therefore a great deal of energy, time, talent and money is being wasted in marketing efforts seeking new clients and ignoring or giving "second rate" efforts to retaining existing clients. Do you practice strategic thinking in your marketing efforts? Do you develop client-retention strategies, in addition to strategies to gain new clients? If you answered NO to these questions, you may want to rethink the way you are doing your marketing. My experience indicates that a strategic approach to client retention is underutilized and therefore a great deal of energy, time, talent and money is being wasted in marketing efforts seeking new clients and ignoring or giving "second rate" efforts to retaining existing clients.

While the internet and email can provide quick and easy access to information and interactions, there are some issues of etiquette to consider. First, not all computer users view email the same way. Some people use email for business purposes only, others for a social outlet and sometimes a balance between the two. It's important to know what people on your email contact list want to receive and what they don't.

There are many benefits to starting your own affiliate business. These range from the freedom to be able to start your own simple business to create a part time income all the way up to having a full network of sites that can literally make you hundreds of thousands of pounds.

By now, you've probably received at least a few spam emails that include some sort of broken variable, usually in the greeting, saying something like "Dear {FirstName}" where you realize that the spam program didn't properly pull your first name out of a list, but left the variable name in its place. However, it appears that one spammer has taken this to a new extreme, and has filled an entire spam list not just with variables, but the set of choices to fill in large parts of the spam itself. It's sort of like spam Mad Libs, but with limited choices. Here's just a taste:

<"Hello"|"Hi"|"Hi there"|"Good day">

I <"hope"|"sincerely hope"|"wish"> this message finds you in a great <"spirit"|"mood">. <"For a start"|"First"|"First of all"> <"I would"|"I'd"> like to <"congratulate"|"welcome"> you on this <"offer"|"opportunity"> because our <"association"|"company"|"corporation"> just got your contact and your <"brief"|"short"> profile through an <"email"|"web"> listing affiliated with <"the UK Chamber of Commerce"|"Monster"|"Careerbuilder"|"Yahoo Jobs"|"Google Jobs"|"HotJobs">

It's not clear how the different choices really make much of a difference in the email, but perhaps it helps fool some spam filters by varying the basic text somewhat.

Imagine, for a moment that, instead of being an attorney, you are a pile of tea. I'm fairly certain no one has ever asked you to do so before, but bear with me. You are a pile of tea. Not a big pile. A few ounces.

The last few years have seen a change in the estate planning market. The apparent determination of President Bush and the Republican majority in Congress to do away with the estate tax has made marketing estate planning more difficult.

Perhaps the number one request that I get is: "Help me fix my product packaging." To which I always reply, "What exactly is the problem?" Surprisingly, very few people can actually answer why their product packaging isn't working. It seems simple on the surface but the true packaging problem might be caused by multiple reasons or a host of things that you have not done. I've created a short check list to help you determine what might create the problem.

The proven techniques for marketing to your target audience found in this article will increase sales by promoting higher visibility.

DRM developers and supporters are constantly saying that DRM "enables" new business models, services and applications -- and it's hogwash. The DRM itself doesn't enable anything. It merely deludes backwards-thinking content owners that it makes it "safe" to try new things, but DRM doesn't enable any innovation; really, it serves as a barrier to it. Still, a Microsoft exec takes the party line in an interview about the company's latest DRM scheme for mobile and portable devices (you know, the one that sounds pretty much like their earlier efforts), saying that it is about " enabling digital goods and commerce between consumers and operators." No, it's about locking content down. What enables digital goods and commerce are a network connection and a device. Acting like DRM is an integral part of content distribution or payment is a joke, as any of the things that the guy talks about -- such as superdistribution or content bundling -- are certainly possible without the DRM. It appears the big selling point of the PlayReady copy-protection technology is this idea of "domains", which MS says will allow content providers to license content to a group of devices a user owns, rather than just a single one. That's great and all, but it also means the content providers can choose not to license content to particular devices a user owns, so it really does little to erase the headaches that these pointless restrictions create for legitimate consumers. That's all DRM really enables: continued consumer frustration.

We were just pointing out how common it is for people to be total jerks online -- but didn't touch on the bad reaction some people have to being targeted in online attacks. Since flame wars tend to escalate to ridiculous levels, it's not uncommon for some to resort to the law to help them out when they feel victimized. Over in Israel, apparently a provider of alternative medical treatments got so upset by posts on a message board attacking him that he demanded an ISP reveal the anonymous commenter. However, an Israeli court has turned down the request, noting that (as in the US), the ISP shouldn't be liable for the statements and has not obligation to turn over such information. There's a great quote from the judge summarizing the case: "The proper balance between freedom of expression on the Internet and the uniqueness of the Internet as an institution for democracy does not justify the exposure of surfers' details."

A few weeks ago, we saw the city of Boston totally embarrass itself when it massively overreacted to a silly guerrilla marketing stunt gone awry. Apparently nobody learned the lesson as other places are adopting the "when in doubt, blow it up" mantra. In New Mexico, some pranksters placed three CD players in a church on Ash Wednesday, and had them play vulgar messages to disrupt the service (via BoingBoing). The police were summoned, and they soon detonated two of the three CD players, while the third one was taken back for fingerprint testing. This is ridiculous for multiple reasons. For one thing, it should have been clear that the CD players were placed there as a cruel prank, as evidenced by what they were playing. And if some people were going to make a bomb in the shape of a CD player, they wouldn't have them play noise that would attract attention to them. The fact that they took the third player back to the lab is basically an admission that there was no way they were bombs, otherwise they'd have detonated that one too. Stories like these are really disturbing for what they say about the way we handle security these days. With so many out-of-proportion responses, how is law enforcement going to respond when there's a real threat?

Whether you have a business or are looking to start a business, marketing and distribution will never be the same. Take note of the 5 hottest buzz words for marketing and distributing your products and services that will continue to grow giant leaps.

Finally, a Product that actually delivers real information and imparts real and up to date marketing skills.

Earlier this month, we pointed out that a judge had told the RIAA it needed to pay up for the legal fees for a woman it wrongly sued over unauthorized music sharing. Not surprisingly, the RIAA has asked the judge to reconsider, but there's also something even more interesting in the request. In the filing, the RIAA lawyers dispute the judge's claim that the RIAA's suit was frivolous and note that if they had been allowed to present more evidence they would have made it clear that the woman being sued should still be responsible for the activity on the account, even though she had nothing to do with the file sharing. The filing argues that, as a parent, she should have been aware of what her child was doing -- and that since the terms of service she agreed to with her ISP placed responsibility on her, then it automatically was her responsibility. On top of that, the filing points out that since she used the same computer, she should have noticed things like the Kazaa icon on the desktop or the annoying popup ads that come with the adware bundled with Kazaa. Of course, the filing doesn't explain how someone who isn't particularly computer savvy is supposed to immediately recognize that pop-up ads = your kid file sharing -- but that seems besides the point. Since it's become increasingly clear that the RIAA is filing these lawsuits based only on an IP address and a prayer (which hasn't been working out so well lately), it's interesting to see the lawyers hitting back and making the case that the owner of an account has liability for the actions of others. It's an argument that's been tried in the past and usually fails, so hopefully the judge will set the RIAA straight again.

Having trouble identifying the ideal customer who would purchase your products? This article covers the basic things you need to do in order to find the right individuals or groups who would buy your products.

A "company" which just so happens to be located in every patent troll's favorite city for patent lawsuits, Marshall, Texas (and which "shares" an office with its lawyer), is now claiming a patent on the very concept of an MP3 player and is suing Apple, SanDisk and Samsung for not paying up. The details behind the patent are a little sketchy. The company is named Texas MP3 Technologies, but the only place where that company's name appears in a Google search is on a patent application (not a granted patent) that was published the day before the lawsuits were filed (suggesting the company didn't waste much time in heading to court). However, the application itself is a continuation of two previous patents, one of which was issued last summer. However, that patent was issued to SigmaTel, in Austin. The earlier patent was issued in 2003, to a company called MPMan, though they all list the same inventors.

Even if you go back to the earliest date, it seems fairly ridiculous that there's a patent on the overall concept of the MP3 player -- and the fact that this patent seems to involve a series of continuation filings, a trick used by folks like Jerome Lemelson to extend the scope of old patents to cover new technologies, doesn't help this seem any more legitimate. The latest application has added a bunch of claims to the original patent, though, it's still in application stage and those claims may very well be thrown out. Overall, while we hate to use the term "patent troll," all of the initial evidence suggests this is a classic case of patent trolling. Some random inventor, who hasn't brought the product in question to market, is claiming (and continually adjusting) a very broad patent on a basic concept, and then suing all the companies who are actually successfully bringing such a product to market. This is creating incentives for innovation?

Back in 2005, Yahoo (with its crew of ex-Hollywood execs in charge) decided that it was going to make Yahoo more like a TV network with lots of original video programming. Of course, after a little while, it seemed like the execs there finally realized that was makes the internet powerful is that it's a communications medium, not a broadcast one. After recognizing this, Yahoo admitted that creating original broadcast content might not make much sense and scaled back the effort. Apparently it wasn't scaled back completely. In what strikes of complete and utter desperation, it appears that Yahoo is getting ready to launch a new video news broadcast... using a reporter who will sing the news (via Techmeme). Yes, sing. It seems like whoever thought this up just took a cue from The Naked News and figured that perhaps The Singing News would be more family friendly. Except... it's not clear why anyone would actually want to watch someone sing the news other than once or twice for the sheer novelty factor. However, if you're looking to create something sustainable, generally speaking, something that's viewed as a novelty gimmick probably isn't going to get you very far.

There's a short blurb over at Infoworld about a new wireless doorbell that actually hooks up your doorbell to a cellular phone system. This way, when the doorbell rings, it can alert your mobile phone -- and you can talk to whoever is at your door and even let them in remotely if you're not home. While at first, that might not sound all that special, it does demonstrate how wireless technology is going well beyond its original uses. Most people think of how mobile phones enabled them to do what they did before (talk on the phone), but do it while mobile. But what can often be more interesting is how such mobility allows for entirely new applications and services that simply couldn't exist before. That's not to say that the wireless doorbell is all that useful. In fact, I'm not sure there's really all that much demand for it. But, it's still encouraging to see people experimenting with allowing new types of products and services built on top of what the last generation of technology allows. For all the talk of how the mobile phone market was becoming saturated due to so many people owning phones, for those who view it as a starting platform for much more interesting offerings, it seems like there's plenty of potential.

In the past, we've covered why section 230 of the Communications Decency Act makes a lot of sense (despite plenty of other flaws in that law). What it says is that a service provider isn't liable for the actions its users take within the service. This makes fundamental sense (it's almost too bad there even needs to be a law pointing it out), because what it's saying is that you don't blame whoever made the tool, you blame whoever used it. You don't blame the telephone company if someone uses the telephone to commit a crime, and therefore you don't blame the ISP or website when a user does something illegal as well. Over the years, the courts have had various decisions (some good, some bad) concerning section 230, but it's beginning to get to the point where judges seem comfortable quickly dismissing bogus claims against service providers. Eric Goldman points to a recent case where a user of MSN's forums got upset about some messages on the forums and rather than going after those who made the statements, sued Microsoft. Microsoft filed a motion to dismiss per section 230 and, voila, case dismissed. Hopefully, this will start to become common practice so that the courts aren't littered with these types of bogus cases much longer.

Crackers had already managed to break the DRM on both the HD DVD and Blu-ray next-generation DVD technologies, but now the Advanced Access Content System (AACS) copy-protection technology has been further undermined. Another cracker reported last week that he'd discovered another one of the keys the system uses to decode encrypted content -- without doing any reverse engineering or using any special tools, just a hex editor. While the group behind AACS says that the latest crack is no big deal because it can issue new keys, but the crackers say the technique used here will make it easy to discover them, and releasing new keys would mean that current players that can't be updated wouldn't be able to play new movies, which certainly wouldn't annoy anybody that's dropped several hundred bucks on one of the new machines. So, it's time for Hollywood to own up to the fact that this latest DRM scheme is a bust, with The Guardian pointing out that the crackers were surprised at just how easy it was to defeat. Hollywood should use this episode to understand that it's pointless to keep throwing resources at DRM and copy-protection technology, because it simply doesn't work. It will be interesting to see how AACS and the movie studios respond: breaking current players' compatibility with new movies would certainly undermine the claim that DRM makes things better for consumers.

Once again, it appears we've found a situation where our favorite trademark test should be used. As has been stated way too many times, the purpose of a trademark is simply to avoid customer confusion over two similarly named products in the same space. As such, the perfect legal test for some of the more bizarre trademark infringement claims is whether or not a "moron in a hurry" would confuse the two. Well, we'd like to send a few morons in a hurry up to the Skywalker Ranch (or, at least, the Presidio) to see what they think of Lucasfilm's latest complaint that Digg's trademark on "Digg" is too similar to Lucasfilm's trademark on "The Dig," which apparently is some video game from 1994 that few of us have ever heard about, let alone played. The idea that anyone would confuse the two things is somewhat ridiculous. And, before someone points out that to protect a trademark you have to defend it, that doesn't mean defending it in cases where it obviously has no bearing, and it's hard to see why the trademark on a 13-year-old game no one plays any more is worth the lawyer's time defending. Perhaps it's just an attempt to get the game some more attention in a bizarre reverse Streisand Effect.

Marketing plans are important to successful businesses. Your marketing plan will lay down all the important pathways by which your business will market its products and thereby earn. This will serve as both your guide and reminder in creating a successful business.

Jury trials over patent disputes quite often turn out in favor of the patent holder, so it's no surprise to see that a jury in San Diego hasn't just sided with Alcatel-Lucent in its patent dispute with Microsoft, but also has ordered that Microsoft pay $1.5 billion for supposedly violating patents having to do with MP3 technology. The details of the case are a little bit complex. Back in the late 80s, AT&T's Bell Labs teamed up with the Fraunhofer Institute to develop the MP3 standard. Fraunhofer ended up with a bunch of patents, and most companies that make use of MP3 technology pay Fraunhofer for the privilege. However, AT&T's Bell Labs claimed some patents related to the standard as well. Microsoft, however, claims the company had a patent reissued and backdated to make it look like it came before the Fraunhofer patents and that the two patents in question are invalid. Of course, since then, Bell Labs was spun off to become Lucent, which later merged with Alcatel. Somewhere along the line, Lucent's management realized how much money people were making off these patent things, and decided to make a big splash demanding that everyone using MP3 technology shouldn't just be paying Fraunhofer, but Lucent as well. Lucent went after Microsoft, but if it wins this suit (and the subsequent appeals), you can bet that just about everyone else who uses MP3 technology will be subject to similar claims as well -- perhaps making MP3 technology a lot more expensive. About the only good thing in the ruling is that the award of $1.5 billion is that it's less than the $4.6 billion Alcatel-Lucent has mentioned in the past. Microsoft will obviously appeal, and it will take some time to get this all sorted out -- but it seems like MP3 technology may be getting a bit more expensive thanks to patents. In the meantime, if all of this sounds familiar, perhaps that's because it mirrors the situation with JPEG patents, where companies suddenly showed up well after the standard was popular to claim patent rights.