Last week Apple filed a lawsuit against HTC, claiming the Taiwan-based phone maker infringed on 20 patents related to the iPhone. The lawsuit was filed concurrently with the United States International Trade Commission and in United States District Court in Delaware.  For the ITC claim and the complaint in the Delaware action, click here. 

The New York Times describes the battle currently raging as intensely personal, with CEOs Jobs and Schmidt engaged in nothing less than World War III.  The fight is between proprietary software and services (Apple) and open systems (Google).  Who will win?

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Mediapost reports that WAC’s goal is to unite the apps market. A wholesale platform would create a single point of entry for developers, which is exactly what a company like Apple would contest. Apple did not attend the Mobile World Congress’ Conference last month.  The aim would be for smaller and larger developers to become essentially one large, united community for the mobile operating systems, carriers and others.

Creating the alliance would require a set of common open standards that would allow developers to create apps for different platforms.  Doing so would likely utilize standards that some mobile carriers have already started to adopt, such as JIL and Bondi. Those would eventually merge into one common standard.

Although the goal is to create a platform, the alliance also appears to be challenging Apple and its App Store.  Even before the alliance, major U.S. carriers such as AT&T and Verizon, as well as large tech companies such as Google and Microsoft, launched their own app stores.  Apple still holds a large advantage, which seems to be the ultimate driving force behind teaming up: to close the gap with Apple by luring developers away with  the opportunity to reach many more customers through a common, global platform.

The alliance’s goal is easier said than done.  Putting aside the difficult task of creating and integrating a common app platform and standard for different carriers, there is still the equally difficult task of developing mobile content, which only Apple has successfully done up to this point.

Thus, the market is there, but will these companies be able to put everything together to compete with Apple?  Apple could decide that the new standard violates its apps development standards. Therefore, another question must be asked: could the alliance lead to a marketing or legal showdown with Apple?

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The News Feed is an integral part of social networking, which shares news update about friends. Information Week reports the description of the patent: “The method includes generating news items regarding activities associated with a user of a social network environment and attaching an informational link associated with at least one of the activities, to at least one of the news items.”

The patent also covers a process for limiting access and assigning an order to the new items.

As of now, Facebook has not made a public announcement regarding its plans for the patent.  Ownership of the update process could adversely affect social networking sites like LinkedIn or MySpace, the latter having lost much of its market to Facebook.

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In September 2009, Facebook reached a settlement regarding its Beacon advertising program. To learn more, check out our earlier post on appslawblog.com.

In the settlement, Facebook agreed to stop the program and give $9.5 million to a new organization to study online privacy. This was a big turnaround for Facebook after the Beacon debacle.

Like the case’s settlement process, the agreement has hit a bit of a snag. Numerous privacy groups have sent a letter to U.S. District Court Judge Richard Seeborg in the Northern District of California. The groups say they are concerned that the organization Facebook is paying will not be independent. The groups prefer the money be used to fund existing nonprofits serving the same purpose.

An official objection to the class action settlement has already been filed. EPIC attorney Ginger McCall claims the settlement would not provide class members with relief aside from Facebook’s promise to disband the Beacon advertising program, which it voluntarily shut down a while ago. Furthermore, the organization that Facebook would be paying is neither independent nor needed.

There is also an issue with attorneys’ fees for the plaintiffs; one attorney mentioned is Scott Kamber. Multiple parties have complained that the fees are egregious.

The fee issues were to be addressed on Feb. 26, 2010, by Judge Seeborg in Kamber’s motion to approve the settlement.

There are clearly internal questions among the lawyers and parties involved over who should control the settlement fund, an important question to that needs to be resolved.

Should EPIC be in control? What about the new privacy organization Facebook would like to give the money to?

Yahoo reports that the organization would have three directors: Larry Magid, an Internet safety advocate; Chris Hoofnagle, an University of California at Berkeley law professor; and Facebook executive Tim Sparapani. Kamber and Rhodes would be on the legal advisory board.

The organization will supposedly become a “public relations organization for Facebook” and will not protect Internet users.

There certainly appear to be conflicts of interest, depending uponwhomo receives control over the settlement funds.

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But why sign up for yet another social networking site?  Well, Google Buzz is different. It serves as a way to meld social networks in an all-in-one location, pulling the user’s activity from sites such as Twitter, Flickr, and Picasa.  Buzz is partly designed to mimic Twitter’s micro-blogging structure. The service also features features  privacy settings like those on Facebook, making user content available only to friends, for example.

Google says Buzz will also be available to mobile devices, including the iPhone.  Features will include voice-recognition posting and a GPS-enabled ability to attach the user’s location to posts.  Other expansions will likely include enabling users to post to Twitter accounts through a Buzz tool.

According to CNN.com, it appears that Google would also like to displace AOL Instant Messenger from its hold as the leading instant messaging service now that the Gchat (aka Google Talk) feature on Gmail has attracted so many users.  Buzz plans to target those users is by offering the Buzz feature to companies as a tool for interoffice communication.  Google thinks their new program could globally businesses communication.

Google claims the new products are a respond to users’ interests. The company is taking a new approach by socializing the Web, meaning that searches will be as social as the Web itself according to Google’s instructional online video.  However, there will be limitations;  Facebook users whose profiles are private will not be viewable via Buzz.

It will be interesting to see how Google Wave will be integrated into all of this.  Keep a lookout for Google making news headlines as it continues its ambitious ways.

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