Anderson

Is there such a thing as an icon in an industry? Consider the current tale of Twitter. The recent lack of success by Twitter to attract a buyer has put into bas relief the woes of the company in establishing a viable, stand-alone business model. Shortly before this most recent search for a corporates suitor took place, The Economist magazine had published an article (September 17th, “Twitter in retweet: A tech icon’s future"), which discussed reasons for the company’s current difficulties. In that regard, it was instructive to read how rivals have encroached onto the areas of Twitter’s functionality. Companies such as Facebook, Snapchat, Instagram, WhatsApp and Facebook Messenger have all pushed forward with features that, in the words of the article, Twitter “…once might have owned.” What is most interesting, however, is the article’s views on the future of the company. First is the observation that— “Twitter will survive, but it has lost its chance to be the sort of internet...

While brand building needs to take into account a large number of factors, at the end of the day, a brand is ultimately only as good as its last sale. This certainly holds true for shoes and clothing. For sure, the producers of these products strive to promote their brands with the goal that the brand will continue to resonate with customers. However, unless producers can get their products into the hands of customers in an effective way, the goal of establishing a brand is doomed to failure. Successful execution of distribution and sale of these fashion products in the name of brand development may be even more challenging in the face of the rise of online sales. An interesting aspect of this online challenge emerges from an article that appeared in the September 3rd issue of The Economist , entitled “Fashion Forward.” The piece describes the commercial success of Zalando , described as “Europe’s biggest online vendor of clothing and footwear”. Zalando is reported to have relation...

I have previously written about California’s film tax credit system and interstate competition, here and here .  The California Legislative Analyst Office has recently published a report concerning the impact of California’s film tax credit.  While noting that the film tax credit likely prevented some jobs and production from leaving the state, it asserts that around 30% of projects receiving the credit may have occurred without the credit.  How does the report reach that conclusion:  Some of the motion picture projects under the first film tax credit program probably would have filmed in California even if they had not received a tax credit. We explain below how we were able to estimate these windfall benefits arising from the first film tax credit. Tax Credit Lottery Allows for Natural Experiment. It is impossible to identify with certainty which projects would have been made in California, which elsewhere, and which not at all, had they not received a film tax cr...

On October 7, the en banc U.S. Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit reversed a panel of the Federal Circuit and upheld a jury verdict for patent infringement (slide to unlock, auto-correction patents) of almost $120 million in favor of Apple against Samsung.  Apple's counsel argued that the three-judge panel of the Federal Circuit improperly rejected almost every finding of the jury and relied on "extra-record" evidence obtained through "independent research."  The en banc Federal Circuit in an opinion by Judge Moore reaffirmed the role of the appellate court does not include reweighing facts or even finding new ones.  The en banc court stated:  We granted Apple’s en banc petition to affirm our understanding of the appellate function as limited to deciding the issues raised on appeal by the parties, deciding these issues only on the basis of the record made below, and as requiring appropriate deference be applied to the review of fact findings. There was no ...

On October 6, 2016, the Federal Trade Commission [FTC] released a 269 page report titled,  "Patent Assertion Entity Activity: An FTC Study"  [Study].  The Study reviews PAE activity from 2009 to 2014.  The  press release  from the study excerpts some highlights:  The report found two types of PAEs that use distinctly different business models. One type, referred to in the report as Portfolio PAEs, were strongly capitalized and purchased patents outright. They negotiated broad licenses, covering large patent portfolios, frequently worth more than $1 million. The second, more common, type, referred to in the report as Litigation PAEs, frequently relied on revenue sharing agreements to acquire patents. They overwhelmingly filed infringement lawsuits before securing licenses, which covered a small number of patents and were generally less valuable.  The report found that, among the PAEs in the study, Litigation PAEs accounted for 96 percent of all pat...