QuoteIt is not a substantive finding of fact, nor a judgement, and nowhere anything like a conviction or finding against any party.
It's not online, but PACER shows that there was in fact a large judgement entered by the court against one of the defendants. This isn't really relevant to uBeam, but I want to be sure the facts are straight here.
It's exactly that kind of writing that gets you sued for libel. You take a quote that refers exclusively to a court direction on a motion to dismiss and conflate it with "a large judgement ... against one of the defendents". Whether you intend to or not, it looks like you're trying to find some way of ascribing guilt without having the facts available to support that. And that's what matters, at least in English law, that a piece of writing, taken as a whole is likely to be read as defamatory by a "right-minded person" - the appearance in the mind of the reader is what counts. I know wherewith of what I speak, I used to be a journalist and I've had formal training in libel law as my publisher, Felix Dennis, didn't like being sued (you may remember a little thing called the Oz trial).
You obviously don't understand the US legal system. Don't worry, you won't be sued for that
new WSJ article on uBeam sound interesting from the title, but behind a paywall:
http://www.wsj.com/articles/ubeam-vcs-created-hype-cycle-1463484610
Same article I believe, no paywall, just a click-through box
http://www.wsj.com/articles/scholars-doubt-ubeam-claims-pitch-deck-calls-tech-commercially-viable-1463484603I don't seem to be able to click through on that page. I only get options to sign in or subscribe.
The trick with WSJ articles:
Open incognito window
Go to google.com it's self and paste the URL into the search box
Click through to the article from the search results page
QuoteIt is not a substantive finding of fact, nor a judgement, and nowhere anything like a conviction or finding against any party.
It's not online, but PACER shows that there was in fact a large judgement entered by the court against one of the defendants. This isn't really relevant to uBeam, but I want to be sure the facts are straight here.
It's exactly that kind of writing that gets you sued for libel. You take a quote that refers exclusively to a court direction on a motion to dismiss and conflate it with "a large judgement ... against one of the defendents". Whether you intend to or not, it looks like you're trying to find some way of ascribing guilt without having the facts available to support that. And that's what matters, at least in English law, that a piece of writing, taken as a whole is likely to be read as defamatory by a "right-minded person" - the appearance in the mind of the reader is what counts. I know wherewith of what I speak, I used to be a journalist and I've had formal training in libel law as my publisher, Felix Dennis, didn't like being sued (you may remember a little thing called the Oz trial).
You obviously don't understand the US legal system. Don't worry, you won't be sued for that
Hence the, "in English law", in there. BUT, the US legal system is the closest to the English legal system on the planet outside of jurisdictions that still hold the English courts as their highest courts of appeal - e.g. Jamaica*. In point of fact, past and present precedents from English courts are still held as 'persuasive' in US courts. Both hardly surprising as the US legal system is descended from the English and both are what are known as 'common law' systems as opposed to 'civil law' systems. While the two systems may vary in detail, they have the same DNA and the concepts of jurisprudence in both are near identical.
The English courts have been the international venue of choice for libel claims for many years. (Like the Texas circuit is for patent claims.) It has been quite common for both sides of a libel case in the English courts to have been from outside the UK as long as the libel was 'published**' in the UK. Part of the reason for this was English libel law has allowed one to bundle all sorts of third parties into the action. So you might have the appellant, the writer of an allegedly libellous piece, his editor, his publisher, a printers and a chain of high street newsagents all involved in the action. The writer is penniless, the high street chain is not - thus damages awarded are likely to be actually recoverable. English libel law has recently undergone and is currently undergoing changes to modify this and you can expect less and less cases to make their way to the English courts.
What this adds up to is, if you're defaming someone on the international stage you'd better be prepared to be sued in England. And that means working to English legal definitions and precedents which are frequently not what the general public think they are. For instance, in English law strict factual accuracy is not necessarily a defense in a libel claim. So calling someone a "fat smelly glutton" when they are overweight, malodorous and eat more than they should is risky unless you can show there is 'a public interest' in these facts (which is not the same as 'the public finds this interesting'), or that it is 'fair comment', or 'a genuine and honestly held opinion' and that you didn't publish the facts maliciously. On the other hand calling them a 'motherf****** bloody son of a whore' is OK, because you have a defense that it is merely 'foul mouthed abuse' and it is immaterial whether their mother actually engaged in prostitution or not, whether they used her services or not or indeed whether they were covered in blood.
Of course the latter would, in some US states, fall under 'fighting words' legislation and permit you to kick them senseless without recourse to a libel action. And there, you said I didn't understand the US legal system.
Now we have to determine if, in a discussion between engineers "You obviously don't understand" qualifies as 'fighting words' and what the venue for the subsequent brawl will be.
*No, she went of her own accord.
**Which word has a special technical meaning with relation to libel law in England. Essentially something is 'published' if it is written and the writer knew that *anyone* other than the person being libelled would or would be expected to read it. A 'private' letter, dictated to a secretary can libel the addressee, a handwritten letter shown to no-one else can't.
Very exciting! Now I get a chance to brag about how great American laws are, that doesn't happen very often
The UK's libel laws are so extreme that, in 2008, New York responded by passing the Libel Terrorism Protection Act.
Of course the latter would, in some US states, fall under 'fighting words' legislation and permit you to kick them senseless without recourse to a libel action. And there, you said I didn't understand the US legal system.
The very next year, in Gooding v. Wilson, 405 U.S. 518 (1972), the Court cited Cohen and stated that speech that is “vulgar or offensive…is protected by the First and Fourteenth Amendments.” Then, the very next term, the Court reaffirmed this stance in Hess v. Indiana, 414 U.S. 105 (1973) by finding that the pronouncement “we’ll take the fucking street later” did not constitute fighting words.
In assessing the fighting words doctrine at this point, it is important to note the speech involved in Gooding. While assaulting a police officer, Gooding shouted, “White son of a bitch, I’ll kill you.” “You son of a bitch, I’ll choke you to death.” and “You son of a bitch, if you ever put your hands on me again, I’ll cut you all to pieces.” If this speech doesn’t constitute fighting words, one would be hard-pressed to think of speech that would qualify.
Gooding was the nail in the coffin—if the fighting words exception has any real vitality left at all (and many commentators, including Nadine Strossen, think it is essentially dead) the Supreme Court has effectively limited the exception to only include abusive language, exchanged face to face, which would likely provoke a violent reaction.
Any chance you could continue this fascinating legal discussion in another thread, and we can get back on track?
Any chance you could continue this fascinating legal discussion in another thread, and we can get back on track?
Investors went “gaga” over the story of a young [Mark] Zuckerberg-like personality of uBeam’s founder, Meredith Perry, but other entrepreneurs would likely have faced more due diligence, said Vivek Wadhwa, a fellow with the Arthur & Toni Rembe Rock Center for Corporate Governance at Stanford University.
“This is the flaw in Silicon Valley. They think that young kids with no experience can do amazing things,” said Mr. Wadhwa.
Andreessen Horowitz and Founders Fund didn't respond to requests for comment.
Mark Suster, general partner at Upfront Ventures and a director on uBeam’s board, published a blog post last week in response to Mr. Reynolds’ critical posts. Mr. Suster acknowledged that the company was behind schedule on delivering products and yet expressed confidence in uBeam’s team. He didn’t address technical criticisms directly.
“Meredith has made claims that she will deliver a working product and I believe her whole heartedly,” he wrote. He also said Ms. Perry has been prone to “hubris,” but he added that any “claims of falsifying information” are “abjectly false.”
Mr. Suster declined to further comment.
Based on physics and known techniques, uBeam’s claims are difficult to justify, said Bernhard Boser, a professor of electrical engineering and computer science and a co-director of the Berkeley Sensor & Actuator Center and the UC Berkeley Swarm Lab. “In particular, it appears that the power level required to meet their claims would be well above accepted and legal safety limits for humans.”
UBeam was big on promise but limited on technical details in a pitch deck it sent to investors in 2014, according to the documents seen by The Wall Street Journal. In the pitch to prospective investors, the company said that “uBeam is the only commercially viable true wireless power technology that can charge consumer electronics remotely, economically, safely, and without enormous transmitters and receivers.”
Several venture investors who often invest in hardware and science-based technology startups were pitched by uBeam in the past few years, but quickly passed because of fundamental questions about the startup’s claims, they said. One of the prospective investors said that uBeam emphasized that it already has a number of prominent backers behind it and urged the investor to make a quick decision.
In its pitch deck, it listed three executives, Ms. Perry, Sean Taffler, then vice president of products and systems, and Mr. Reynolds, the person who has since left and written the series of negative blog posts about the company recently.
The deck said, “imagine a single device that can remotely power electronic devices, communicate with every electronics device in the uBeam environment, collect real-time data about each device. And also locate devices precisely within the uBeam environment, detect -motion -smoke -carbon monoxide, real-time 3-D imaging of the uBeam environment.”
A Ph.D. recipient who studied under Mr. Boser said such a technical undertaking had many questions. “The math just doesn’t work out. It’s not that it’s impossible per say but it’s impractical,” said Richard Przybyla, a Ph.D. in electrical and electronics engineering from the University California, Berkeley.
Mr. Przybyla said the size of the transmitters and receivers would be hard to make for a consumer product to charge and receive for mobile devices, among other problems. In its deck, uBeam said that an individual model transmitter to power five to 10 devices within a range 0.5 to one meter, would be a square with sides of 10 to 15 centimeters. The receiver, meanwhile could be “nearly any size, shape or color.”
Lux Capital had looked at the company in 2014, according to Josh Wolfe, managing partner at the firm that is focused on science. Mr. Wolfe didn’t say why the firm decided
“I follow the ‘Feynman rule’: Reality must take precedence over public relations, for Mother Nature can’t be fooled,” Mr. Wolfe said. He was referring to a famed report by physicist Richard Feynman on the space shuttle Challenger disaster, where he concluded that NASA management underestimated the probability of failure by a thousand times, in part, to secure more funds.
There were several world-class engineers there. He's one of them, both in capability and character.
Perry hasn't tweeted or Facebooked since all this recent stuff went down...
She usually comes out from such things
Perry hasn't tweeted or Facebooked since all this recent stuff went down...
She usually comes out from such things
I'm sure she's busy running the wire bonding machine and plumbing ASICs onto PCBs like there's no tomorrow.
Perry hasn't tweeted or Facebooked since all this recent stuff went down...
She usually comes out from such things
I'm sure she's busy running the wire bonding machine and plumbing ASICs onto PCBs like there's no tomorrow.
It's probably all over at this point. I don't see them getting another round of funding, at least nothing as big as they got till now.
It's probably all over at this point. I don't see them getting another round of funding, at least nothing as big as they got till now.
Perry hasn't tweeted or Facebooked since all this recent stuff went down...
She usually comes out from such things
I'm sure she's busy running the wire bonding machine and plumbing ASICs onto PCBs like there's no tomorrow.
It's probably all over at this point. I don't see them getting another round of funding, at least nothing as big as they got till now.
Rumor has it that they are working on a new strategy since the old one didn't work.
she'll go down kicking and screaming before she changes pivots direction on the product.
she'll go down kicking and screaming before she changes pivots direction on the product.
I think she'll protect her name at all costs but the new subject of "wireless data transmission" already seem like a potential pivot.