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August 3, 2011

David Canton

Food for Thought: Apple v Samsung Lawsuit, and the State of Broadband in Canada

Two disparate articles caught my eye this morning that are worthy of pondering.

Apple has sued Samsung claiming that Samsung's tablets violate Apple tablet patents. Some of the features in question are actually part of the Android operating system, not just the tablet itself. In Australia, sales of Samsung's new Galaxy Tab 10.1 are on hold pending court action. Setting aside the legal issues, and the debate over whether such patents are a good or bad thing for innovation, consider this point of view by Mike Masnick of Techdirt:

But, really, all Apple has done with this lawsuit is to signal to the world (loudly) that hey, we're really freaking scared that Samsung has built a better product than we have.

Author Peter Nowak has published an article entitled "CRTC is peddling broadband Kool-Aid" that suggests that the state of broadband in Canada is not as rosy as the CRTC paints it. A CRTC report suggests that prices and speeds in Canada compare well against other countries. Peter points out that this was a result of comparing to only 8 countries. And that another report puts Canada in about 33rd place for download speeds, and 65th place for upload speeds. His conclusion:

The bottom line is Canada can’t even try to aspire to an innovation-based economy without first making sure it has proper upload speeds. This hasn’t occurred yet to the CRTC, which is obviously too busy peddling its Kool-Aid vision of a country with wonderful broadband.

For those on Google+, take a look at the comments on a post by Jacob Glick on this article where the consensus is that upload speeds increasing matter in a world where we are using cloud computing, and posting photos and video.

David Canton is a business lawyer and trade-mark agent with Harrison Pensa LLP in London, Ontario. David's practice focuses on technology issues and technology companies. David is co-author of Legal Land Mines in E-Commerce published by McGraw-Hill, writes a weekly column on Today’s Business Law for the London Free Press and the Canoe.ca Technology news, and blogs at canton.elegal.ca. 
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