Month: March 2017

Gavin Grimm is a transgender teenaged boy at the center of a Supreme Court battle about whether transgender people have the right to use restrooms matching the gender they identify with. (credit: Geoff Livingston)

The tech sector is unifying again, this time in support of a transgender boy's fight with a Virginia school district over which bathroom he may enter.

The 53 companies—from Amazon to Zendesk—are asking the US Supreme Court to side with 17-year-old Gavin Grimm. Grimm and his legal team are fighting the Gloucester County School Board's decision to deny the boy use of the male restroom because it doesn't match Grimm's "biological gender." The 53 tech companies said transgender people have the right to use the bathroom of the gender they identify with.

In a friend-of-the-court brief to the high court, the companies note that they all have "nondiscrimination policies or practices that permit transgender individuals to use the company facilities consistent with their gender identity."

Enlarge / Facade of the Supreme Court of California, as seen on October 2, 2016. (credit: Smith Collection/Gado/Getty Images)

The California Supreme Court ruled Thursday that state and local officials must disclose public records even if those "writings" are held on private devices or accounts. The City of San Jose and the County of Santa Clara had argued that such records could be exempted from the California Public Records Act.

The case dates back to 2009, when Ted Smith, a local environment activist, filed a public records request about various San Jose officials' requests concerning local development efforts. When records came back that did not include materials from personal devices or accounts, he sued.

The state Supreme Court was unequivocal in its conclusion:

Enlarge (credit: Getty Images | Yuri_Arcurs)

Broadband industry lobby groups are celebrating a Federal Communications Commission decision to prevent enforcement of a rule intended to protect customers' private data from security breaches.

The data security rule that was scheduled to take effect today would have required ISPs and phone companies to take "reasonable" steps to protect customers' information—such as Social Security numbers, financial and health information, and Web browsing data—from theft and data breaches. The FCC issued a stay of the rule yesterday, and Chairman Ajit Pai said he wants to shift authority over data security and privacy entirely to the Federal Trade Commission.

“Today’s FCC action to issue a temporary stay of the data security regulation is a welcome recognition that consumers benefit most when privacy protections are consistently applied throughout the Internet ecosystem," read a statement from NCTA—The Internet & Television Association, the cable industry's biggest lobby group. The group insisted that its members are committed to protecting the security of personal information, rule or no rule.

Enlarge / The Chromebook Pixel 2. (credit: Andrew Cunningham)

Earlier this week, comments from Google hardware SVP Rick Osterloh suggested that the company was totally out of the first-party laptop business.

"Google hasn't backed away from laptops," he said, referring to the company's Chromebook efforts. "But we have no plans for Google-branded laptops." The statement understandably prompted a wave of stories about the death of the Chromebook Pixel and related projects—the last version of the Pixel was introduced in March of 2015 and unceremoniously discontinued in August of 2016.

Now, Osterloh has modified his comments somewhat, tweeting that Google simply has "no plans to share at this time." That doesn't mean Google laptops aren't dead—the company has still discontinued its only first-party laptop without a replacement—but it leaves the door open for future projects. It has been suggested that a Chromebook Pixel 3 could be a trial balloon for the "Andromeda" OS, a marriage of Android and ChromeOS that could unify Google's desktop and mobile software platforms.

A representative patent image showing how Smartflash's "data storage and access system" works. (credit: USPTO)

The dreams of patent riches have gone up in smoke after a panel of appeals judges ruled that all three of Smartflash's patents are invalid as overly abstract. At this point in history, a one-employee patent-holding company with no novel legal argument has an infinitesimal chance of getting the attention of the US Supreme Court, so Smartflash's path has ended with the opinion (PDF) published yesterday.

Smartflash is owned, at least in part, by Patrick Racz, the named inventor on US Patent Nos. 7,334,720, 8,118,221, and 8,336,772. Racz lives on the English Channel's Isle of Jersey and filed for the patents in the late 1990s when Smartflash was an operating company with a real product, a type of early digital media player. But by 2002, Smartflash was out of business. Racz kept the patent applications alive, though, and saw them through to issuance.