Article provided by Barry K. Rothman.

Apple, Yahoo, Google, Facebook, LinkedIn and Microsoft have been given the go-ahead in disclosing the details on orders and the data requests that they have received from the Foreign Intelligence Court.

This has come after these companies have sued the government for the right to declassify these numbers to the public.

In a statement released through Wall Street, both the Attorney General Eric Holder and Director of National Intelligence, James Clapper, stated, “Through these new reporting methods, communications providers will be permitted to disclose more information than ever before to their customers. The office of the Director of National Intelligence…has determined that the public interest in disclosing this information now outweighs the national security concerns that required its classification.”

And so, with this ability to disclose information that was previously considered classified, the companies have agreed to drop their lawsuits as well.

And recently, Apple has already published a letter describing its relationship with the government as well as detailing the National Security Orders for data (249 in all) it has received from the government.

Apart from this, 927 law enforcement account requests for 2330 accounts and out of which it disclosed data on 747 accounts and objected to doing so 102 times.

Also, it did not reveal data on 254 specific accounts but did provide non-content data from 601 accounts. However, it did reveal data from 71 accounts with the percentage of data requests where they did disclose a certain amount was about 81%.

About the Author:
Barry K. Rothman is an attorney from Los Angeles specializing in Business and Entertainment Law. He has represented many celebrities from Hollywood. Make sure to also visit Barry K. Rothman Reviews to read some of his client reviews.


Article Submitted by iClimber.

With Kodak on the verge of bankruptcy, almost 1100 of its patents are up for sale for about 500+ million. However, this has brought together two bitter enemies, Google and Apple, who have teamed up to buy these patents. This might come as a surprise considering the ‘patent war’ that has made the news recently. However, it seems as if with this move, Tim Cook is more than happy to put Apple’s affinity for litigation behind them.

What both these companies also share in common is that they aren’t particularly too fond of the current patent system, which according to both CEOs, is bad for innovation. Apart from this, analysts also believe that by teaming up, they’re actually making a smart business decision, as both companies have spent plenty of money in court and have also been quietly bidding for Kodak’s patents on their own. However, this partnership does a lot to save costs as in teaming up together, Kodak won’t be tempted to up the bid by pitting these companies against each other. While this might be a shrewd choice, it will also help Kodak to pay off its debt, after being in business for almost 132 years.

Experts believe that this combined approach by both Google and Apple seem to be a much better one as opposed to the preposterous amount, $4.5 billion in all, paid by almost every tech giant for the Nortel patent while Google alone spent almost $12.4 billion for Motorola Mobility and its 20,000 patents. And even though both companies can easily come up with $500 million in the next four months, and rescue Kodak, it’s rather unfortunate to see the latter close its doors.

This article was submitted by iClimber, who offers social media marketing services.


Article submitted by Submit Express.

It’s unanimous that Apple, Facebook, Amazon and Google dominate the online world yet according to panelists at the Techonomy Conference, Apple and Facebook are particularly vulnerable.

One of the panelists, known as Alec Ellison, the chairman of technology investment banking at Jefferies & Company, has criticized Apple, in saying that the company must continue to come up with cool new products if it wants to remain in the lead. Alternatively, the other three namely Facebook, Amazon and Google won’t lose much ground even if they don’t come up with innovative products.

He also said that the Apple Store, which is a key advantage now, might work against them in the near future and likened it to the example of IBM stores that only became a “big drain” when product momentum slowed down. Citing these reasons, he also went as far as to say that Apple has the least “stickiness” with customer compared to the other three.

As for Facebook, Mark Mahaney, a former analyst at Citi, Mark Zuckerberg remains a big question mark as he has only spent time with Techonomy’s David Kirkpatrick but very little with anyone else. Hence, the question mark as it doesn’t reveal how good executives really are for the next 5 to 10 years.

He also said that Facebook’s margins are very high and they should switch to ‘investment mode’ as soon as possible. Also, one area that Facebook hasn’t invested sufficiently enough has been mobile where, due to HTML5, their mobile apps have significant technical issues while it took them far too long to come out with an iPad app.

Also, the analyst, Mahaney also said that in the next few years another big online player will emerge, thanks to using a technology that isn’t economic yet.

Article submitted by Submit Express. If you need SEO services or online reputation management services, visit Submit Express.


The highly publicized trial between Samsung and Apple draws to a close, where both companies have accused the other of infringing on its technology.

While Apple wants $2.5 billion from Samsung for replicating the look and feel of its products such as the iPhone and the iPad as well as its software features, Samsung wants $519 million from Apple for infringement on five of its patents on Apple’s portable devices mentioned above including the iPod.

Both sides went through the last few hours of the allotted 25 hours for clarifications and rebuttals and will now on to the next stage which involves closing arguments from both sides in order to sway the jury of nine in their favor.

Depending on which side the jury rules in favor of, the payouts would amount to millions if not billions apart from sales bans on products and software features that are deemed as infringements.

As of the last day of evidence, Apple had four hours to Samsung’s 46 minutes and the former spent time attacking the credibility of Samsung’s wireless patents while the latter weren’t granted extensions to fight back.

However, the tension that existed during the previous three weeks was not there as laughter prevailed during the testimony which was conducted at a quick pace.

With 100 pages of instructions that the jury and the two sides that have to agree on, it sure looks like that the option to settle out of court might not be ruled out completely, considering the risks involved in losing the lawsuit.