February 2012

The Justice Department is poised to clear Google's $12.5 billion acquisition of Motorola Mobility as early as next week, according to people familiar with the matter, giving Google a powerful armory of technology patents to deploy in the smartphone wars. However, antitrust enforcers in the US and Europe remain concerned about Google's commitment to license Motorola patents to competitors on fair terms, those people said, and will closely monitor Google's use of the patents. The European Commission has set a Feb 13 deadline to decide whether to approve the acquisition.

The Justice Department also is set to clear a second tech-patent deal that has raised antitrust concerns in the smartphone industry. It will allow a consortium of tech companies including Apple, Microsoft and Research In Motion to acquire a trove of patents from bankrupt Canadian telecom-equipment maker Nortel Networks for $4.5 billion, people familiar with the matter said. Investigators had been looking at whether those tech companies were planning to use the patents to unfairly hobble competing smartphones using Google's Android software.

Microsoft’s vow to negotiate with competitors over industry-standard patents, instead of trying to block their products, marks a change from the company’s position less than a year ago.

Microsoft, Google and Apple are staking out positions on standard-setting patents amid global litigation over wireless devices and tighter regulatory scrutiny. The Microsoft pledge, and an Apple policy made public Feb. 7, were timed to undermine Google, said Andrew Updegrove, a lawyer with Gesmer Updegrove in Boston. “You already have Google increasingly under the spotlight,” said Updegrove, who advises standard-setting boards on intellectual property policies. “They’re living in a tighter and tighter confinement just because their market power is increasing.” By issuing policies that contrast with Google, Microsoft and Apple “are playing to the marketplace and they’re playing to the regulators,” he said.

The inventor of the World Wide Web, Tim Berners-Lee, testified in a courtroom Feb 7for the first time in his life. The web pioneer flew down from Boston, near where he teaches at MIT, to an eastern Texas federal court to speak to a jury of two men and six women about the early days of the web. His trip is part of an effort by a group of internet companies and retailers trying to defeat two patents — patents that a patent-licensing company called Eolas and the University of California are saying entitle them to royalty payments from just about anyone running a website with “interactive” features, like rotating pictures or streaming video. The defendants -- including Google, Amazon, and Yahoo -- are hoping that Berners-Lee’s testimony -- combined with that of other web pioneers like Netscape co-founder Eric Bina, Viola browser inventor Pei-Yuan Wei, and Dave Raggett (who invented the HTML “embed” tag) -- will convince the jury that the inventions of Eolas and its founder, Michael Doyle, aren’t worth much. The stakes couldn’t be higher — if Berners-Lee and the defendants don’t succeed, Eolas and Doyle could insist on a payout from almost every modern website.

GigaOM, a technology media company, has acquired ContentNext Media, the parent company of paidContent, from Guardian News & Media, for an undisclosed sum.

With the purchase of ContentNext, GigaOM will acquire a collection of online publications, including paidContent, a site that tracks the online media industry, mocoNews.net and contentSutra.com. GigaOM’s acquisition comes as consolidation is increasing in the digital media industry. Over the last year, several technology and business news sites have been folded into larger media organizations. Last fall, AOL purchased TechCrunch, a GigaOM rival, for tens of millions of dollars. In December, SAY Media acquired ReadWriteWeb, another popular technology blog, for an undisclosed sum.

The Guardian, best known for its namesake British publication, acquired ContentNext in 2008 for 4 million pounds, according to a report by the Guardian, citing financials disclosed in 2010. But it has since cooled on its investment, turning instead to focus on building its Guardian brand in the United States. In November, the company announced it was putting ContentNext up for sale. With the acquisition, GigaOM will add 15 additional employees to its staff of 40, and expand its footprint in the New York and European markets. Like GigaOM, ContentNext also hosts conferences, which generate revenue through attendance and sponsors. The Guardian will retain a minority share in ContentNext and will hold an observer seat on the board. ContentNext’s network of sites attracts about 726,000 users and 1.5 million page views per month.

Founded in 2006 by journalist and technology investor Om Malik, GigaOM attracts about 4.5 million visitors per month. It has raised about $15 million from its venture capital investors, including Reed Elsevier Ventures, Alloy Ventures and True Ventures. But it has been fairly conservative with its balance sheet. ContentNext is the company’s largest acquisition to date, it previously acquired two small technology news sites in 2008.