Startup Toolbox

Jay Parkhill December 21st, 2007

Apple announced that it has settled two-year old litigation over Apple rumor blog Think Secret’s publication of information about the then-pending release of the Mac Mini computer. Some pundits have expressed concern that the settlement involves closing down Think Secret’s site, and that this may set an unhappy precedent for other blogs.

That worry seems a bit overblown to me- being put out of business by a big-guy litigant is an ever-present risk for little guys everywhere. Just because it happened once doesn’t make it any more or less likely to keep happening.

What I found interesting in the case, in light of my earlier post about trade secrets, is that Apple initially brought suit claiming trade secret infringement. I.e. that the existence of and Apple’s plans for the Mac Mini were not-generally-known information with economic value that Apple had taken steps to keep secret. The court disagreed and held that the information did not constitute a trade secret.

Here’s another difference between trade secrets and other types of IP, then- a party has to prove to the court first that it owns a trade secret, and then that the secret has been improperly disclosed. Patents and trademarks are registered through processes in front of Patent and Trademark Office attorneys, not by a judge or jury.

It isn’t immediately clear to me if this is a positive or negative attribute of trade secrets. It may be as simple as pay now (for patent or trademark registration) or pay later (when trade secret litigation comes up). Depending on how complex the topic is, I can see a USPTO examining attorney reaching a different conclusion from a judicial factfinder (judge or jury) about whether certain information is proprietary. At the least USPTO precedents and procedures are a bit better mapped so the outcome may be a little more predictable. Banking on a court to uphold a trade secret requires an extra roll of the dice.

• Apple , Intellectual Property , legal

Jay Parkhill September 5th, 2007

I can’t resist jumping on the Wi-Pod bandwagon here. I do a decent amount of work from Starbucks and the repetitive, too-loud music they play is hands-down my least favorite part of the entire store “experience”.

Still, I wonder what it means if consumers will be able to buy Starbucks now-playing songs direct from their touch iPods. How big a leap is it from there to being able to buy everything else in the store from the iPod?

As soon as I ask the question I wonder if that is remotely desirable. Handing over cash or my check card to the cashier is pretty simple- seems a lot easier than standing at the counter staring at my iPod rather than the cashier, waiting for it to connect to the network, bring up the transaction, authenticate identity, debit my iTunes account, which debits my bank account, etc.

The more I think about it, the more this seems like a Rube Goldberg-ian way to buy a cup of coffee. Think I’ll stick with cash.

• Apple , Tech , wireless

Jay Parkhill July 18th, 2007

When I started my business I decided to switch from PC to Mac.  It’s been a very happy transition generally, but there are a couple of applications I haven’t been able to adequately replace on the Mac platform.  One is a Word redlining-on-steroids program called DeltaView that is tremendously useful for comparing documents.  The other is billing software.  I just haven’t found a satisfactory legal billing program for Mac.

I’m also start to use contractors and QuickBooks online holds out great promise of easy remote data entry.  That sounds good to me- I hate entering my own time notes, never mind someone else’s as well.  Unfortunately, QB online only works on Internet Explorer for PCs.

Enter Parallels.  It looks really amazing.  I’m excited to see how it works in real life.

• Apple , Tips & Tricks

Jay Parkhill January 17th, 2007

Ok, I will admit that I have spent a week scanning stories (ever more quickly) about the iPhone and trying not to get sucked up in the hype. The phone looks beautiful, it will probably work reasonably well, and successively better and at lower price points with each generation. That part is not very exciting.

What has me interested is comparing the (perceived) relationships between the iPhone and the wireless carriers, and the iPod and the music and video content studios. It makes me think of something I once read about logging.

In the heyday of the logging industry, timber would be cut and floated downstream to sawmills. Frequently logs would pile up into a logjam and experts would be called into determine which logs needed to be freed to release the entire jam. The handful of logs tying up the entire bunch were referred to as the “key logs” and the people who could find the key logs were extremely important resources in the logging industry.

In the modern era, logjams are metaphorical and sometimes only visible as such in hindsight. Looking back to 2000, the music industry had clearly gotten itself stuck behind a rights-based logjam of sorts. At risk of losing a big piece of its harvest to piracy, the industry was unable to figure out how to let consumers buy music online. Apple’s iPod and iTunes store may not have broken the jam completely, but let the industry bring a bunch of its timber downstream and earn revenue from music sales. Studios are slowly allowing iTunes to do the same for video content.

In a similar way, the wireless carriers have created a logjam of wireless services. Consumers want wi-fi/wireless connectivity and access to services that aren’t necessarily offered through the carriers. The carriers have consumers locked in to the wireless networks with little or no ability to work around the jam. Thus, consumers pay $2 for a ringtone from Cingular, but $0.99 for the entire song on iTunes. To date, no handset manufacturer has been able to break the jam and give consumers what they really want- fast, inexpensive internet access to online content.

This is where the iPhone comes in. Time will tell whether reality lives up to the promise, but Apple is saying that the iPhone has built-in wi-fi as well as Cingular Edge support. That means I could use Edge to get online (slowly) from just about anywhere, and jump to a wi-fi network for a much better online experience where wi-fi services are available.

At least for me, the winner there is likely to be T-Mobile, since it runs the most reliable wi-fi networks around where I live and being able to get online from my iPhone *and* my laptop would be enough for me to spring for a T-Mobile wi-fi account.

That’s the short term, though. If I am writing this then Cingular and every other carrier must have figured it out as well and are working on their own wi-fi networks. Here’s hoping that if nothing else, the iPhone will break the online access logjam created by wireless carriers, allowing consumers to get fast, cheap connectivity and the carriers to find a new revenue stream.

• Apple , Broadband