Can You Really Own The Idea Of Making Your iPhone Look Like Beer?

from the drink-up! dept

It's time to raise your glasses in a toast to ridiculous intellectual property lawsuits. Or, if you don't have a tasty beverage on hand, perhaps a virtual one, say, on your iPhone? Well, unfortunately for you, that may be a problem -- as the latest ridiculous lawsuit concerns two competing virtual beer applications, both of which make your iPhone look like the side of a full beer glass, that will "drain" the beer, as you tilt the iPhone. Cute, gimmicky app, right? Except if you're a pissed off developer who seems to think that only one person should be allowed to make such an app. A company called Hottrix that made such an app is suing the beer company Coors for an astounding $12.5 million for offering up a similar app of its own.

Hottrix's app, iPint, cost money, whereas Coors (perhaps implicitly recognizing how infinite goods -- the silly app -- can help sell more scarce goods -- beer) gave its app, iBeer, away for free. The Coors version was more involved, as it also included a "game" where you needed to guide a sliding pint across a bar into some waiting hands. Hottrix's lawyers claim that the idea of such a virtual beer glass is copyrightable -- which seems fairly questionable. Concepts can't be covered by copyright. It needs to be the exact implementation, and as long as the Coors version was different, then it's difficult to see the copyright claim. Hottrix also pulls out the bogus argument that iPint hurt iBeer's sales. That's simply incorrect. It wasn't Coors that hurt Hottrix's sales, it was Hottrix, for having a bad business model. Competition isn't illegal.

But, of course, Apple in its infinite (loop) wisdom, removed the Coors app after Hottrix complained, thus protecting Hottrix from its own business model mistake. And yet, Hottrix still wants $12.5 million from Coors for daring to come up with a similar idea. You have to hope this gets thrown out of court quickly.

62 Comments | Leave a Comment..

Beer, Blogs And Bias

from the i'll-drink-to-that dept

The Wall Street Journal has an article focusing on a blog set up by Miller Brewing Company called Brew Blog. There are a few different, interesting points worth discussing here. First, the blog isn't used as a blog about what's going on at Miller Brewing. Instead, Miller hired an experienced reporter, and told him to just cover the beer industry as if he were a beat reporter. In other words, it's reporting news -- and even breaking stories on the competition. In fact, it revealed that main rival Anheuser-Busch was planning a new beer before A-B was able to make the announcement itself. This is certainly a recognition of how content is advertising. The blog clearly isn't "advertorial." It's full-on reporting about the industry, in a way that's interesting and relevant to those in the industry.

What may be even more interesting, though, is what the article says about journalism. In an age in which journalists are whining that their jobs are disappearing, here's yet another example of where suddenly there are new types of jobs for journalists appearing every day. But, even more interesting, is a quote at the end of the article highlighted by David Card. It's from Harry Schuhmacher, the editor and publisher of a fee-based trade publication on the beer industry:

"I tell Miller you're subsidizing a free publication, and it hurts the trade press," he says. "But they don't care."...Mr. Schuhmacher adds that he writes fewer positive pieces about Miller than he once did because he knows Brew Blog will always publish the same stories.

Think about this for a bit. People complain that when you have a company-sponsored publication it will inevitably be biased -- but the sponsorship of that site is totally open and in the clear. The site's content stands for itself. Yet, at the same time, a supposedly "objective" traditional journalist is admitting that he writes fewer stories about Miller because he's upset that it's competing with his own publication. From that, it would certainly seem like the Brew Blog is a lot more credible (it's biases are out in the open), while this fee-based trade pub admits that story choices are sometimes based on personal vendettas.

32 Comments | Leave a Comment..

Of All The Reasons To Say No To Internet Voting, Wouldn't Porn And Beer Be Near The End Of The List?

from the try-that-again dept

There are many, many reasons to be against the idea of allowing political voting via the internet, starting with questions about the security, accuracy and reliability of the technology. However, former Polish prime minister Jaroslaw Kaczynski, who admits he wants to attract younger internet users to his conservative party, gave some bizarre reasons for not being a fan of internet voting. Apparently the problem isn't questions about the technology but the idea that voters may be multitasking with beer and porn: "I am not an enthusiast of a young person sitting in front of a computer, watching video clips and pornography while sipping a bottle of beer and voting when he feels like it." Does that mean he'd be okay with if it people agreed not to watch porn or sip beer while voting?

24 Comments | Leave a Comment..