Top News
RIM and NTP Settle Out of Court for $612.5 Million
RIM, its carrier partners, and its customers are out of the woods, given RIM's out-of-court settlement with NTP for a one time payment of $612.5 million. The court has dismissed the case, and no further decisions are needed or pending. The settlement and payment covers all current and future NTP patents. At the hearing on February 24, Judge Spencer scolded the two sides for not coming to an earlier out-of-court agreement.
As Dan Taylor at the Mobile Enterprise Alliance wrote, it is weird that RIM settled when it (a) said that it had a non-infringing technology workaround ready-to-go, and (b) the US Patent and Trademark Office rejected all of NTPs patents.
Customers are happy that this whole mess is behind them, and rightly so. It shouldn't have come to this. The stock market was happy too, with shares rising and expected to rise more now that the uncertainty is over.
Other Links: ComputerWorld, SearchMobileComputing, The Hamilton Spectator, Dan Taylor at Mobile Enterprise Alliance, CBC News
EMC Buys Authentica, Overlooks Two Other Closer Fits
EMC Corporation acquired privately-held Authentica, a digital rights management player. EMC intends to add Authentica's capabilities to its Documentum content management and eRoom collaborative workspaces products. Pricing wasn't disclosed, but one estimate put the deal at $75 million.
Two other players in the digital rights management space were overlooked in the acquisition. Both SealedMedia and Liquid Machines have out-of-the-box products to enforce digital rights on Documentum-controlled or originated content, and SealedMedia offers an out-of-the-box product for enforcing digital rights with content in eRoom. Authentica offered neither.
Neither EMC nor Authentica have done the press release thing yet to acknowledge the acquisition.
Other Links: InternetNews, Enterprise Storage Forum, SC Magazine, Byte and Switch
Positions
- Paul on Microsoft's Red Bull ... Paul Mooney analyzed the official Application Analyzer 2006 for Notes, and posts his reaction. Ed Brill
Vendor Moves
- Zimbra and Apple iSync ... Zimbra released the Zimbra iSync Adaptor, enabling Zimbra users on the Mac to synchronize calendar and contact information between the two platforms. Supports native sync with Apple iCal (calendar) and Apple Address Book (contacts). Offers time-based automatic synchronization. Zimbra
- SNARF for Outlook ... Microsoft Research has been working on SNARF, a utility to scan unread email to determine its importance to the user. Works with Microsoft Outlook. Search Exchange, Microsoft Research
- Foldera to 650,000 in 3 Weeks ... Foldera disclosed that it has received beta requests from over 650,000 users. The hosted service was to be formally launched at the O'Reilly Emerging Technologies Conference today. Yahoo
- RIM BES 4.1 adds IM ... The Version 4.1 update of RIM BlackBerry Enterprise Server will add corporate instant messaging interoperability, linking with Microsoft Live Communications Server, Lotus Sametime, and Novell GroupWise Messenger. Due end of March 2006. VNUnet.com
- Open-Xchange Partner Program ... Open-Xchange, an email provider, unveiled a new sales and marketing partnership program, a formalization of what is currently going on, with two levels of membership: Member-level and Certified-level. Open-Xchange claims that it currently has 300 partners in 40 countries. prnewswire.com
- FileNet Integrates with SharePoint ... FileNet announced an agreement with Vorsite to offer the Vorsite Enterprise Integration Toolkit as a preconfigured module for integrating FileNet Content Manager and SharePoint Portal Server 2003. Strategiy
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