Daily Archives: March 22, 2013

Mar 22 2013

A High Court ‘Gray Market’ Win for Costco, EBay

Ok, I don’t do this often, but here’s a repost I found interesting:

A High Court ‘Gray Market’ Win for Costco, EBay
Bloomberg Businessweek
March 19, 2013
http://www.businessweek.com/articles/2013-03-19/a-high-court-gray-market-win-for-costco-ebay

In a victory for companies like Costco (COST) and EBay (EBAY)—not to mention cash-strapped college students—the Supreme Court ruled that textbooks and other goods made abroad can be resold in the U.S. without violating American copyright law. In other words: You bought it, you own it. The 6-3 decision offers legal protection and legitimacy to what has been estimated as a $63 billion “gray market,” in which third parties import brand-name goods protected by copyright or trademark in the U.S. Some of those gray market goods are resold online or at brick-and-mortar discount retailers. The retailers, like EBay and Costco, want to continue to sell goods manufactured and sold abroad at lower prices, even if those goods arguably violate a U.S. copyright. The Tuesday decision clears the way for them to do so.

Advertisement
Mar 22 2013

RIM Blackberry 10 (BB10) available this week

With the general availability of the Blackberry 10 device starting on Monday of this week, several important questions arise.

Does anybody actually care?  RIM has lost so much momentum to iPhone, Android, and Windows phone.  Can they realistically ever recover? I doubt it.  Still, there are die-hard crackberry addicts who will embrace this new model.  Businesses need to take a bit of a look and see if there is any demand in their user base.  If there is (especially executive demand), then the new management platform may be worth digging into.  RIM wants everybody to use this to manage ALL of their mobile devices.  Whether or not this will actually happen remains to be seen, but BES10 will be needed if you want to support BB10 properly.  Since BES10 is new, it would probably be prudent to wait 6 months or so before deploying it in production.

Gartner has published a fairly concise report on this: http://www.gartner.com/newsroom/id/2374518