Author: folgado

Amazon along with Boulder company Nite Ize, a maker of specialty lights and phone mounts under the STEELIE brand, filed suit on Wednesday in a Seattle federal court against a group of counterfeiters who have been ripping off Nite Ize products. The issue was brought to Amazon’s attention in October 2018, following a tip from the United States Customers and Border Protection agency, which had seized a shipment of 300 counterfeit STEELIE brand car mounts, Amazon lawsuit explains.

The agency alerted Nite Ize, which then, in turn, alerted Amazon.

“Defendants have deceived Amazon’s customers and Amazon, infringed and misused the IP rights of Nite Ize, and harmed the integrity of Amazon’s store, and tarnished Amazon’s and Nite Ize’s brands,” the lawsuit states.

The suit goes on to identify eleven individuals and businesses who operated third-party seller accounts on Amazon’s online store where they would advertise and sell counterfeit versions of Nite Ize products.

Nite Ize may not be a household name, but you may be familiar with some of its products.

The company began back in 1989 with the invention of a headband mini flashlight holder. It introduced its STEELIE line in 2014, which is a family of products designed to make phone mounting easier. Its patented magnetic mounting system is a two-part ball and socket system that’s particularly popular as a hands-free viewing platform in cars, home, and elsewhere.

Above: STEELIE Original Dash Kit; credit: Nite Ize

That popularity, of course, attracted the knock-offs.

The defendants, Amazon and Nite Ize allege, marketed and sold items they claimed to be genuine STEELIE products in violation of Amazon’s Business Solutions Agreement. The suit names individuals living in Minnesota, Maryland, and Ontario as defendants, along with businesses based in China.

Nite Ize had been aware of the counterfeiting problems for some time.

It ordered test purchases from the defendants over the course of 2018, then reviewed the products they received and found them to be counterfeited, the suit explains.

Nite Ize and Amazon are now looking to recover actual and statutory damages as a result of the counterfeiters’ illegal business operations, along with other relief, including the ability to recover the defendants’ profits.

The lawsuit is the latest in a series of efforts by Amazon to crack down on the rampant counterfeit trade taking place online. While some brands have accused Amazon of turning a blind eye to issues with its third-party sellers, their illegal activity is ultimately damaging to Amazon’s brand, as well.

“Each day, millions of consumers use Amazon’s store to purchase a wide range of products across dozens of product categories from Amazon and third-party sellers,” the company said, in the filing. “Amazon recognizes that consumer trust is hard to win and easy to lose, so Amazon invests significant resources and effort into building and preserving its customers’ trust.”

The retailer also claimed that only a “small number of bad actors” seek to abuse that trust by selling counterfeit goods.

In more recent months, Amazon has become more active in its fight against counterfeiters.

Last year, for example, it filed three other lawsuits in partnership with fashion designer Vera Bradley and mobile accessories maker Otterbox over counterfeit goods.

And in February, Amazon launched a suite of new tools for brands and manufacturers that help them to proactively go after counterfeiters. As part of a program called “Project Zero,” brands can provide Amazon with logos, trademarks, and other key data. Amazon then scans its 5 billion product listings per day, looking for any suspicious items.

Another set of tools allows brands to work with Amazon to introduce product serialization capabilities. This puts a unique code on the manufactured units which Amazon scans at purchase to verify authentic sales.

But as this new lawsuit demonstrates, the counterfeiting business can be complex. With just this one company’s brand, there were people based across three countries involved with the illegal activity.

Amazon says in the filing it has more than 250 million active consumers and millions of third-party sellers. It’s a lot to police.

Source: Tech Crunch

A $30-per-month email service capturing the adoration of investors and founders in Silicon Valley is perhaps an unsurprising story in a subscription-obsessed landscape, yet we’re only now hearing how stealth-y startup Superhuman has captured investor $$$.

The New York Times reports that the SF startup closed a $33 million Series B led by Andreessen Horowitz last month, raising at a $260 million valuation. The company has been oddly tight-lipped about its funding for a startup that people won’t stop talking about, though CEO Rahul Vohra has justified this as a desire to keep the story on the product not the money.

Superhuman has little need for a marketing budget when every VC’s twitter is spreading the gospel of luxury email.

The startup has seemed to have grown at its own pace, the service’s members frequently reference the 100,000+ people on the waiting list to pay for the email app  though the company seems most intent on growing by word of mouth referrals which allow you to hop the line. (Roose’s story details that list is actually 180k people long, and that the company has less than 15k on-boarded subscribers)

The service is designed around helping people that spend several hours in email every day to find areas to cut down on friction. What’s it like though?

I spent about 6 months paying for the service (thanks for the referral Niv) before eventually unsubscribing a couple months ago. There’s certainly plenty to love, though the price can be a bit to stomach when you realize how much you’re paying for email compared to other services.

Superhuman’s central strength is speed. Its other strength is that it feels like an exclusive club, though its members probably have nicer things to say about it than The Battery.

More on its functional differentiators in a bit, but the culture surrounding the app is a little fascinating. It’s a luxury app icon to have on your phone. You won’t find the Superhuman app in the App Store, you have to be approved for the service in iOS’s TestFlight where constant beta updates are delivered.

Other founders I’ve chatted with have been inspired by how Superhuman’s on-boarding process helps users feel like they’re getting a product custom-built for them. I met with Vohra during my 30-minute meeting where he walked me through the product and asked me about my own email habits as he helped me set up my account. The result is a bizarre connection with the product and team.

Example: for 30 days after you set up your account, you get an email from Vohra detailing some tips and tricks for using the service. Not only did I not immediately unsubscribe from these messages, I read almost all of them. When I filled out a survey at the end surrounding what I thought about the service, an employee at the startup shot me an email a few days later with a full response, I responded to that.

But honestly, how many paid services would expect its users to include a line in their signature plugging the service “Sent via Superhuman” and never disable it? And yet, the cult of Superhuman led me to keep it for awhile until my eyes were opened that flexing my $30/month email in my signature made me look like an asshole. Yes, it did.

What all of these interaction earn Superhuman is that when reality eventually beamed on me that I was not making VC money and I should probably end this little experiment, I almost felt like I had to apologize to the startup for cancelling my subscription. I felt so coddled as a member of the service with every new little update feeling like a new membership perk.

Okay, okay, yes, there are other ways to feel special that aren’t a $30/month electronic mail service. What is so nice about using it?

Speed is the top-line item. The desktop experience is the platform’s key differentiator, it’s structured entirely around keyboard shortcuts and the app is constantly training you to move through your email more quickly.

A couple of months in, I truly was spending far less time combing through pitches and tips, particularly thanks to the custom buckets that Superhuman sorts your mail into. The “Important” tab in your inbox differentiates newsletters and mailing list emails and only sucks in messages that were sent directly to you. It is miles better than the rudimentary sorting that Gmail pulls off.

If you aren’t used to the cult of “inbox-zero,” the service will drag you into it. The app prompts you to archive, snooze or delete every email in your inbox, transforming the utility of the service from a simple mailbox into a to-do list.

Other features like the souped up email tracking lets you know when your email was opened and does this much better than the free Gmail extensions I’ve tried. When a founder tried to claim he hadn’t seen my email asking him about some problems at his startup, I checked the app and saw he had opened it no less than 17 times on his phone and PC. Hmmm…

Before starting Superhuman, Vohra founded Rapportive which LinkedIn later bought. He kind of recreated that service for Superhuman which really allows you to get into people’s inboxes more easily. If you can guess someone’s email, a sidebar in the app will populate with a bio of the person if you’re correct. This is obviously pretty useful to a journalist, but if you’re trying to cold email your way into new opportunities it can be pretty great as well.

I’m perhaps not enough of a power user to get the most of snippets, which allow you to quickly inject canned responses that you can stylize, but they seem like they’d be amazing for intros though I rarely ended up using them.

When it comes to shortcomings, Superhuman is a desktop experience first-and-foremost. I’m a heavy mobile email user and the Superhuman app may have better than most other iOS email apps I had used, but it is still iterative on mobile and I think I was left thinking about the subscription costs most when I was swiping through emails there.

Even in the six months that I was a subscriber the mobile app made some hefty advances, though getting people to continually justify a subscription over what would otherwise be free is a challenge that won’t go away as long as it holds its price tag.

The issue for Superhuman is that in a lot of ways the app just trains you how to use email more effectively. Since cancelling my subscription, I’ve dialed in my Gmail keyboard shortcuts and shifted how I flag and archive messages and I’d say I’m operating fairly close to the efficiency I pulled off on the premium service.

The mental load of spending $30 month on email is admittedly heavy and is undoubtedly a barrier for Superhuman scaling to different echelons of users, but with $33 million from Andreessen Horowitz, the startup certainly has some options for how it grows from here. I do still dearly miss the “Important” tab, email tracking and sidebar profiles and perhaps I will eventually return though I imagine that will happen when the service costs less than what I put into Apple Music and Netflix combined.

Source: Tech Crunch

Niantic had already been hinting at plans to throw a big festival for Harry Potter: Wizards Unite players — something in the same vein as its Pokémon GO Fest events, but with less Pokémon and more virtual witchcraft and wizardry. I mentioned it back when the game first got a launch date.

Now it’s a bit more official. Niantic says it will be throwing a two day Wizards Unite festival in Indianapolis, Indiana later this summer.

Details are still a bit light, but here’s what we know:

• It’ll happen on Labor Day weekend, August 31st – September 1st.
• Whereas the US version of Niantic’s Pokémon GO Fest series takes place in Chicago, Illinois, the Wizards Unite festival will take place one state over, in Indianapolis, Indiana.
• Like GO Fest, you’ll need a ticket to participate — though no word yet on how much tickets will cost. The current plan is to open up ticket sales via a lottery.

At this point, it would’ve been a bit surprising if Niantic didn’t do a real-world gathering for Wizards Unite. They’ve been doing in-person “anomaly” events around the world for their first title, Ingress, for years, and have held dozens of real-world events for Pokémon GO.

Niantic uses these events as an opportunity to bring their most hardcore fans together, with tens of thousands of players taking over these parks for days. Attendees are sometimes rewarded with early access to something new — at GO Fest 2018, for example, players were given the opportunity to catch a new, extra rare Pokémon (Celebi) nearly a full month before anyone else.

Source: Tech Crunch

Hey, so remember earlier today when I said that new 5G cities still qualify as news, for a little while longer, at least? AT&T is making it under the wire with the addition of Las Vegas to its growing portfolio of 5G business cities.

The addition of Sin City brings the carrier’s total up to 20 cities for its 5G+ — a confusing branding it gave to avoid confusion with its purposefully confusing 5G E branding. Confused? Good. That was kind of the point.

Anyway, AT&T’s certainly adding cities at a rapid clip and outpacing the competition with the sheer number of locations. Of course, it’s important to note two things.

1. This is limited to business users for the time being
2. It’s limited to “parts” of Las Vegas

The second bit is in line with the rest of AT&T’s 5G offerings. It also goes for Verizon’s including the recent additions of Denver and Providence. AT&T hasn’t specified which parts yet (Verizon, on the other hand, was EXTREMELY specific). In both cases, though, I’d anticipate spending plenty of time switching back and forth between 5G and LTE.

If that sounds good, AT&T offers the Samsung Galaxy S10 5G for doing just that.

Source: Tech Crunch

Google has always argued that the data it collects does more than provide power for its targeted ad empire — it also makes its services more useful. But not everyone thinks that Google should be able to suck up a never-ending stockpile of personal data on its users. Today, Google is taking a step towards giving users more control over some of their data with the launch of a new feature that automatically deletes Location History data on iOS and Android devices.

The company pre-announced the feature back in May, just ahead of its annual developer conference Google I/O.

Google had said at the time that location history could help it make better recommendations — like suggesting a restaurant you may like, for example. However, Google amasses what some would say is a “creepy” amount of user data, right down to a map of everywhere you’ve ever been.

The new controls will allow you to set Google to erase its collection of location data on your every 3 months or every 18 months, depending on your preference.

To do so, you’ll first visit your Google Account‘s My Activity section and tap the new “choose to delete automatically” option in the Location History area.

From the screen that appears next, you can choose which time frame you prefer — 3 or 18 months. You can also opt to delete data manually — something you can do at any time. This is the default setting.

The controls are rolling out today on iOS and Android, says Google.

These rollouts take time so you may not see the settings for yourself right away.

If you’d rather stop Google from gathering any data in the first place, you can still choose to entirely toggle off its various data collection settings one-by-one — including Web & App Activity, Location History, Device Information, Voice & Audio Activity, YouTube Search History, and YouTube Watch History.

 

Source: Tech Crunch

Okay do you know how we can taste things and that was pretty special? It’s not special anymore, because researchers at UC Davis working with colleagues Carnegie Mellon have developed a way for an experimental soft robotic gripper to ‘taste’ things as well, using bacteria engineered to allow it to detect a specific chemical.

The robot employs a ‘biosensing module’ that’s built using an engineered strain of E. coli bacteria to indicate the presence of a chemical called IPTG by producing a protein, which in turn triggers a circuit built into the robot that’s designed to detect light. That signal is used to let the robot know whether the chemical is present in the water bath in the clip below, and so you can see that once the chemical is totally dissipated and no longer present, the robot can detect that and then it knows it’s safe to put the object (a ball in this case) into the water.

Basically, researchers have built a robot with integrated organic components, or what they call a ‘biohybrid bot.’ This one is somewhat limited in what it can do, because it can only detect a single thing, and it’s a challenge to build one that can track small changes in concentration over time, too.

But the researchers have hopes that once they can solve the challenge of building a microbial community that can exist and remain stable in size and makeup over time (like the ones that live in our gut and are crucial to digestion do, for instance), they can potentially do a lot. For example, they could provide ways for robots to not only detect chemicals, but also perform self-healing repairs by building polymers or even generate bioenergy to help power the robot independent of other sources.

 

Source: Tech Crunch

Ready to tackle the colossus that is enterprise software? Join us and more than 1,000 attendees for TC Sessions Enterprise 2019 on September 5 at the Yerba Buena Center for the Arts in San Francisco. We’re talking founders, technologists and investors digging deep into the challenges facing established and emerging enterprise companies today. Get your early-bird tickets now and save.

TechCrunch’s first ever event focused on Enterprise is a prime networking opportunity that will feature a crowd drawn to a day of intensive, on-stage interviews (led by TechCrunch editors) with the king pins of enterprise as well as breakout sessions, exhibiting startups, receptions and much more.  Naturally, we have a fantastic networking app to help attendees wring the most opportunity out of the show.

CrunchMatch (powered by Brella), is TechCrunch’s free business match-making service. Effective networking is more than just meeting people. CrunchMatch helps you search for the right people based on specific mutual criteria, goals and interests. The platform’s combination of curation and automation lets you easily find, vet, schedule and connect with the people you want to meet — founders, investors, technologists, researchers or MBA students. You decide, and CrunchMatch delivers.

CrunchMatch is available to all attendees. When the platform launches, keep an eye out for an email with a sign-up link. Fill out your profile with the pertinent details — your role (technologist, founder, investor, etc.) and who you want to connect with at the event. CrunchMatch will make meet-up suggestions, which you can approve or decline.

Now that you’re up to speed on the networking situation, all you need to do is buy a ticket to TC Sessions: Enterprise.  Early-bird passes cost $395, and you can save an extra 15 percent when you buy group tickets (four or more) for $335 each. Student passes sell for $245. Bonus: for every TC Sessions: Enterprise ticket you buy, we’ll register you for one free Expo Only pass to Disrupt San Francisco 2019. Holla!

There are a limited number of Startup Demo Packages available for $2,000, which includes four tickets to attend the event.

TC Sessions: Enterprise takes place on September 5 in San Francisco. Join your community of enterprise-minded founders, investors, CTOs, CIOs and engineers to talk machine learning, AI, intelligent marketing automation, the cloud, quantum computing, blockchain and so much more. Buy your early-bird tickets now.

Interested in sponsoring TC Sessions: Enterprise? Fill out this form and a member of our sales team will contact you.

Source: Tech Crunch

Could you use a little summer startup fun? We’re rolling out our next round of tickets to the TechCrunch Summer Party at Park Chalet, San Francisco’s coastal beer garden. If you want to join your startup peers to eat, drink and be merry, don’t delay. These limited-release tickets will be snapped up before you can say “hold my beer.” Buy your Summer Party ticket today.

Our 14^th annual summer soiree offers an opportunity to connect and converse with like-minded entrepreneurs in a relaxed setting with ocean views. Take a break from the daily grind, have a local brew and strike up a conversation. You never know where it might lead or when lightning might strike — especially with Lead VC Partner Merus Capital along with firms August Capital, Battery Ventures, Cowboy Ventures, Data Collective, General Catalyst, and Uncork Capital in the house.

Party-planning details you need to know:

• When: July 25 from 5:30 p.m. – 9:00 p.m.
• Where: Park Chalet in San Francisco
• How much: $95

Don’t miss your chance to enjoy a fun night that fosters both opportunity and community. We always mix it up with games and door prizes — like fun TechCrunch swag, Amazon Echos and tickets to Disrupt San Francisco 2019.

Remember, we release tickets to the Summer Party on a rolling basis and they sell out quickly. Buy your 14th Annual Summer Party ticket today. If you strike out this time, sign up to be notified when the next batch goes on sale.

Is your company interested in sponsoring or exhibiting at the TechCrunch 14th Annual Summer Party? Contact our sponsorship sales team by filling out this form.

Source: Tech Crunch

It’s not every day the three biggest competitors in a space join forces to denounced political action. Of course, this isn’t the first time the Trump administration has had this impact on a category.

Microsoft, Nintendo and Sony (collectively known as gaming’s “big three) penned a joint letter noting the harm the industry stands to face in the age of Trump administration tariffs on China. Addressed to Office of the United States Trade Representative General Counsel Joseph Barloon, the note asks for a modification the existing tariff list.

“While we appreciate the Administration’s efforts to protect U.S. intellectual property and preserve U.S. high-tech leadership,” the letter reads, diplomatically, “the disproportionate harm caused by these tariffs to U.S. consumers and businesses will undermine—not advance—these goals.”

The three companies highlight a broad range of cascading impacts the laws could ultimately have the vast industry, including,

• Injure consumers, video game developers, retailers and console manufacturers
• Put thousands of high-value, rewarding U.S. jobs at risk
• Stifle innovation in our industry and beyond.

The impacts of tariffs have already begun to take their toll on various technology sectors, with several leaders — including, notably, Apple’s Tim Cook — personally petitioning Trump for exceptions.

Source: Tech Crunch

Iris Nova, the Coca-Cola-backed startup that creates Dirty Lemon beverages, is announcing plans to spend $100 million over the next three to five years to expand its offerings.

Founder and CEO Zak Normandin said the money will go towards launching new beverage brands developed internally at Iris Nova, as well as investing in beverages created by other companies, which will then distributed via the Iris Nova platform.

“This is the way for us to compete with the bigger beverage companies,” Normandin said.

He added that he’s open to working with startups taking advantage of the shift away from “high calorie, high sugar beverages” as well as established beverage companies. Either way, they’ll get access to the Iris Nova platform, which allows them to accept orders via text message, and to distribute their beverages next-day or same-day to every major U.S. market.

Normandin said that by linking the investment and the platform partnership, Iris Nova is forcing itself to be “highly selective” about which beverages will be part of the portfolio.

He also said the company won’t work with directly competing products — for example, he won’t partner with two different coconut water brands, but he would work with a coconut water brand and a sparkling water brand. In exchange, the brands have to commit to using Iris Nova as their only e-commerce platform, aside from Amazon.

Although Normandin brought up The Coca-Cola Company several times as a point of comparison (“I think that if Coke were to start today, it would do things exactly the way we are”), he also emphasized that he isn’t trying to turn Iris Nova itself into a consumer brand. There will be advantages for consumers who order across the Iris Nova portfolio — namely, they won’t have to reenter their payment and shipping information — but Normandin said, “I don’t think there will ever be an Iris Nova marketplace.”

The company said it will start adding new beverages to the platform on July 1. The goal, Normandin said, is to introduce 12 brands by the end of the year. He isn’t sure what the internal-external mix will be, but he said the company has already made two external investments, while also having few beverage brands of its own ready to go, including the Tres Limón line of nonalcholic aperitifs.

“What we think is that billion-dollar brands will not exist in the future,” he said. “I have no specific loyalty to Dirty Lemon as a brand. Our goal is to meet the needs of consumers right now. Eventually, if it goes away, that’s fine — we’ll create new selections for that same consumer group.”

Source: Tech Crunch