Aereo

The Supreme Court did not issue a ruling Monday on Aereo's case.
Their schedule lists the next likely days for a ruling as Wednesday, Thursday, and possibly next Monday.

Aereo’s technology is complex, but the Supreme Court case is fairly simple -- does Aereo take broadcasters’ programming without paying for it, or does Aereo just let consumers legally receive TV signals?

The case depends heavily on the 1976 Copyright Act. That 1976 law predates the huge rise in cable TV, satellite TV, VCRs, and internet TV. Three decades after that law a Federal judge said remote VCR/DVRs are legal (AKA "Cablevision ruling").

Aereo won two previous federal court cases: New York circuit and appeal.

The more I think of it, Aereo's argument looks unbelievable that they are a remote personalized antenna system.

Aereo shows off a teensy tiny antenna (roughly coin-sized) that they say is dedicated to a specific user.  Huh? That wouldn't get past the giggle stage of an electrical engineer.

Instead of providing 1000s of individual antennas, Aereo's system is really one big antenna built from 1000s of those little elements.  Sort of like the military phased-array antennas.  Looking at the placement of the amplifier and signal processing components, they are NOT dedicated to a user.

Instead of 1000s of remote antennas, it looks like Aereo's system is a variation of the ordinary "community antenna" system.

And for copyright law, a community antenna DOES trigger the "retransmission" and the “public performance” rules. On that technology perspective, Aereo loses.

But after reading (okay ... "skimming") the appellate ruling, which said the antenna is individual not shared, if the Supreme Court goes along with that finding, then it looks like Aereo will win.

High-tech R&D labs?

A rumor going around today that Oracle will another big acquisition. Oracle might buy Micros (MCRS).  Rumored price is $5B.

Yawn....

Oracle has been doing at least one big acquisition roughly every year.  

Some succeed, some fail.

What is interesting is the question if this should be the model for other big high-tech companies.

Decades ago, the model was for every company to run its own internal R&D labs.  This was a copy-cat of AT&T's Bell Lab (or IBM's or RCA's or Xerox's or ...)

Now the model is either:

Oracle, Microsoft, Yahoo -- big and small acquisitions

Apple, Google, Facebook  -- (mainly) small acquisitions

IBM might be the only company that is still highly dependent on its internal labs. Why is that? Is it a fall-out of "disruptive" development?

BTW, over the past decade Oracle spent:
 ~10% on internal R&D

 ~20% on buying companies

 ~70% on everything else