Here's a summary of interesting developments in intellectual property, technology, social media, and Internet law for the week ending June 14, 2019.

ApisProtect Announces New Innovation: Internet of Things to Study Bees

Much has been said about how the Internet of Things will change consumers’ daily lives and how it relates to consumer privacy.  But now, the Internet of Things (IoT) has also extended to other uses besides AI-assistants and medical devices.  A recent innovation has used the Internet of Things to study bees in an attempt to figure out why there has been such worldwide colony collapse.

New Device Utilizes The Internet of Things to Learn About Bees and Help Bee Decline

ApisProtect, an Irish company, has created a device that monitors the health of honey bees and uses the Internet of Things to study bee hives and deliver the information. Currently, the unit is only available to commercial beekeepers and allows data on the hive to be sent back and forth.

The ApisProtect sensor unit is marketed as the ApisMonitor and attaches to the roof of a honeybee beehive. ApisProtect boasts that the unit will allow beekeepers to have access to new insight that will allow them to act to protect the health of the colony before collapse is imminent.  The ApisProtect is marketed as being able to show beekeepers the condition of the hive, analyze problems with it, as well as provide suggestions to the beekeepers on how to proceed when the hive is in danger.

ApisProtect and Immarsat Partner to Build Worldwide Network for Internet of Things to Study Bees

ApisProtect is also collaborating with Immarsat, a company known for its global and mobile satellite capabilities.  The partnership is intended to allow the Internet of Things to build and access a worldwide network of ApisProtect data in order to slow the current, rapid decline of apiaries.  The partnership also hopes that it will actually be able to potentially increase honey production in the end.

Specifically, Immarsat will contribute an analytics platform that measures the bees’ health and report it via Long Range Wide Area Networks and Broadband Global Area Network connectivity. Over time, the data collected will help a machine learning algorithm determine problems or colony collapse much earlier.

Read the full article here.

Japanese Government to Create List of Insecure IoT Devices by Hacking Consumers

Earlier this month, the Japanese government approved a new amendment that permits government agencies to hack into Japanese citizens’ private devices that are connected via the Internet of Things (“IoT”). Calling the move a nationwide “survey” intended to protect the nation from foreign cyber attacks, the Japanese government plans to use the preemptive hacking as a means to detect devices that are deemed insecure or vulnerable to attack but owned by private citizens. They will then create a list of insecure IoT devices. The Japanese government has cited the upcoming 2020 Tokyo Summer Olympics as the main impetus for drafting such a drastic law and intrusion into citizens’ private devices.

The large scale survey of citizens’ devices will be carried out by government employees of the Japanese National Institute of Information and Communications Technology (“NICT”) under the supervision of the national Ministry of Internal Affairs and Communications. To gain access to citizen devices, NICT employees will attempt to log into citizens’ devices by using default passwords, password dictionaries, and other similar “common” passwords. If the government is able to access a citizen’s device in such a manner, the device is deemed insecure and will be recorded on a nationwide list of insecure IoT devices compiled by the government. The NICT will then pass on the list of insecure IoT devices to Internet Service Providers (“ISPs”) and other relevant service providers so they may warn the relevant citizen or account holder directly.

Find the full article here.

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Darin M. Klemchuk is founder of Klemchuk LLP, a litigation, intellectual property, and transactional law firm located in Dallas, Texas. He also co-founded Project K, a charitable movement devoted to changing the world one random act of kindness at a time, and publishes Thriving Attorney, a blog dedicated to exploring the business of the practice of law, productivity and performance for attorneys, and other topics such as law firm leadership and management, law firm culture, and business development for attorneys.

Click to learn more about Darin M. Klemchuk's law practice as an intellectual property lawyer.