The Wall Street Journal - 19.08.2019

B4| Monday, August 19, 2019 THE WALL STREET JOURNAL.

TECHNOLOGY WSJ.com/Tech

companies that own the intellectual property, he said. Patent lawyer Jim Hinton said foreign companies own about 70% of the roughly 1,600 AI and machine-learning pat- ents filed by Canadians at the U.S. Patent and Trademark Of- fice since 2015. Those concerns haven’t stopped Canada’s top officials

from inviting big U.S. companies north. Last year, Justin Trudeau became the first Ca- nadian prime minister to visit San Francisco in more than 70 years. During his visit, Sales- force.com Inc. said it would invest $2 billion in Canada over the next five years. It isn’t clear how much of that sum Salesforce has invested

Electronic Arts this month launched a new edition of Madden NFL.

MARK RALSTON/AGENCE FRANCE-PRESSE/GETTY IMAGES

self vigorously. “This has been an ongoing issue between the companies and nothing new has arisen, except that Delta has chosen to litigate this matter,” he said in an email through a spokes- man. They declined to address specific allegations. Delta and a lawyer representing it declined to comment. The airline disclosed the incident last year and said credit-card details and other personal information from up to 825,000 customers were exposed. Delta is seeking reimburse- ment from [24]7 for all costs related to the breach, totaling millions of dollars, according to the suit. The airline hasn’t disclosed expenses from the incident in its financial filings. Privately held [24]7, founded in 2000 and based in San Jose, Calif., uses artificial intelligence to create cus- tomer-assistance products such as chatbots, consumer- analytics programs and digital advertising services, according to its website. The bot on Delta’s website allowed customers to get information about purchasing tickets, changing itineraries and other requests, the lawsuit said. Hackers accessed [24]7’s systems and modified source code, letting them scrape Delta customers’ personal data and payment-card

details from the airline’s website, according to the suit. The airline accuses 24[7] of failing to implement basic security controls such as requir- ing multifactor authentication for employees accessing source code and forbidding staff members from using the same login credentials, according to the complaint. Hackers modified the chatbot’s source code using compro- mised credentials, then moni- tored activity on Delta’s website and captured data that visitors entered there. The breach wouldn’t have happened if [24]7 had imple- mented “even basic access re- strictions,” the lawsuit said. Companies’ relationships with technology providers can come under scrutiny after a data breach. As Capital One Financial Corp. announced a breach in late July, it specified the problem wasn’t caused by any security flaw in the cloud technology it uses. The bank has moved significant bank operations to Amazon.com Inc.’s cloud services over the past several years. Some contracts state that technology suppliers must implement strong cybersecurity measures and have unlimited liability for breaches, said Ieuan Jolly, co-chairman of the privacy, security and data innovations practice at law firm Loeb&LoebLLP.

Delta Air Lines Inc. is su- ing an artificial-intelligence company that powered a chatbot on the carrier’s website, accusing it of lax cybersecurity that caused a 2017 data breach. The unusual lawsuit highlights the sensitive rela- tions between companies that have been hacked and their business partners. Companies rarely sue technology providers over data breaches because their contracts generally specify the level of third-party suppliers’ liability and because the two partner firms typically end up settling out of court, cybersecurity lawyers said. Delta’s lawsuit, filed last week in the U.S. District Court for the Southern District of New York, alleges that chatbot provider [24]7.ai Inc. lacked basic cybersecurity safeguards while running the AI-powered service on Delta’s website in 2017 and 2018. The suit also says [24]7 waited more than five months to inform the airline of the breach instead of telling it immediately, and did so using LinkedIn instead of official channels—potentially violating the companies’ con- tract. William Bose, [24]7’s senior vice president and acting gen- eral counsel, said the chatbot company intends to defend it-

BYCATHERINESTUPP

Delta Sues Chatbot Partner

Over Hacking of Fliers’ Data

A Cheap Pay Scale Helps City’s Profile

Toronto, North America’s fourth-largest city, is cheaper than several large U.S. cities: Its computer engineers and programmers earn salaries that are on average $71,000 a year lower than their counterparts in San Francisco, according to recruiting platform Hired Inc. By hiring in Toronto, companies can get around the Trump administration’s tough immigration rules that have made it more difficult to hire foreign workers in the U.S. Toronto is also benefiting from Canada’s fast-track visa

program and a universal health-care system that lowers companies’ costs of providing employee benefits. Those attributes helped propel the city to the final round of Amazon.com Inc.’s search for a second headquar- ters, the only non-U.S. city to make the cut. Though Toronto lost the bid, Amazon still opened a 113,000-square-foot office in the downtown core in December and said it would hire 600 new employees. The links between San Francisco and Toronto have grown so tight that airlines added 139 flights between the cities in the past two years, according to travel data provider OAG.

games in the U.S. each year, according to NPD, ranking No. 4 in 2018. “NBA 2K19” finished the year at No. 3. The FIFA game and Sony Corp.’s “MLB: The Show” didn’t make the top 10 but are strong sellers, said NPD analyst Mat Piscatella. Sports games are a key part of videogame makers’ portfo- lios. EA’s sports portfolio alone generates roughly $3 billion in annual revenue, or about 60% of the company’s total, according to an estimate from investment-research firm Bernstein. Take-Two’s sports games are ontracktomakeuparound 38% of total revenue in the cur- rent fiscal year, Bernstein said. Industry analysts credited the long-term success of sports simulators largely to advances in technology that have given publishers the ability to update their games after release to re- flect athletes’ real-world per- formance. That has made the games more engaging for lon- ger stretches of time, they said, and thus more lucrative. The trend of frequently up- dating sports games is rooted in the development and popu- larity of consoles including Mi- crosoft Corp.’s Xbox One and Sony’s PlayStation 4, which connect to the internet. As more people play games online, developers have poured more time and money into creating content for games with well- defined fan bases, as opposed to taking chances on entirely new properties.

Electronic Arts Inc. kicked off the videogame industry’s annual sports season with a strong start for Madden NFL, showing the resilience of de- cades-old franchises as techno- logical strides enable game developers to engage players with new modes and online competitions. The latest installment, “Madden NFL 20,” was the best-selling game in the four weeks that ended Aug. 3, even though it was only released on Aug. 2, market-research firm NPD Group said in a report last week. The football videogame is now the eighth-best-selling U.S. title this year, according to NPD. The report didn’t disclose the total number of units sold. Other annual sports simulators have shown durability. Take-Two Interactive Soft- ware Inc. said this month its most recent basketball game, “NBA 2K19,” sold a series re- cord of about 12 million units. EA said last month net revenue from the Ultimate Team mode in its FIFA franchise rose 11% from a year earlier. A new installment of NBA 2K, which made its debut in 1999, is due in early September. EA’s “FIFA 20,” the latest ver- sion of a franchise that started in 1993, and “NHL 20” are ex- pected to be out next month. Madden, which launched more than 30 years ago, is typically among the top-10-selling

BYSARAHE.NEEDLEMAN

Videogame Publishers

Win With Sports Titles

already, and company repre- sentatives didn’t respond to requests for comment. AppDirect , a company that develops online stores for business-software applica- tions, committed to hiring 300 people as part of a Canadian expansion. A spokeswoman said it is on track to hire at least 60 people in Canada since Mr. Trudeau’s visit and expects to accelerate that pace in the coming years. Those investments helped boost foreign investment in Canada’s information and communications technology industries by 21% between 2017 and 2018, compared with a 3% decline a year earlier, according to Statistics Canada. Privacy concerns are worry- ing some Canadians. A pro- posal by Google affiliate Side- walk Labs to build a city “from the internet up” on Toronto’s waterfront has become a flashpoint for critics concerned about how the company would handle data col- lected by sensors throughout the planned neighborhood. Resident Julie Beddoes sup- ports a volunteer-led group that is opposing the Sidewalk project. She also said that companies like Google are fol- lowing a pattern that is famil- iar in Canada, where large U.S. companies come north and push out smaller, domestic firms. “I’m concerned the big bulldozing megacorporations coming in will make it harder for our younger people to start their own companies,” she said. Sabrina Geremia, head of Google’s Canadian business operations, said the company employs more than 400 people in Toronto and roughly 1,200 in Canada, serving as an an- chor tenant that attracts engineers and developers to the city. Many of those arrivals help expand the broader tech community by joining other companies or launching their own, she said. —Jacquie McNish contributed to this article.

TORONTO—Silicon Valley is
invading Toronto.
Intel Corp. has announced
plans to build a graphics-chip
design lab in Canada’s largest
city. Car-hailing service Uber
Technologies Inc. will be
opening an engineering hub.
Google’s parent, Alphabet Inc.,
proposed building a new To-
ronto campus as part of a sen-
sor-laden “smart city” on the
Lake Ontario waterfront, and
Microsoft Corp. said it would
expand its Canadian workforce
by more than 20%.
There has been so much ac-
tivity that Silicon Valley
Bank , the Santa Clara, Calif.,
financier for some of the
world’s largest venture-capital
firms and startups, opened an
office here in March after 19
years of handling Canadian
business from Seattle and Bos-
ton.
“There’s a hell of a lot more
going on up here than we ap-
preciated,” said Win Bear,
head of business development
for Silicon Valley Bank’s Can-
ada operation.
Technology companies are
hiring more workers in To-
ronto, attracted by the re-
gion’s diverse population of
6.4 million, a deep pool of
skilled labor and cultural simi-
larities to major U.S. cities
such as San Francisco, New
York and Chicago.
Many Canadians are wary
of the influx. Some worry
about the invasion of Big Tech,
while others say U.S. busi-
nesses are crowding out do-
mestic companies and siphon-
ing some of the country’s most
valuable intellectual assets.
“We are squandering our
future,” said Jim Balsillie, for-
mer co-chief executive of
BlackBerry Ltd., whose smart-
phones were once ubiquitous.
Canada isn’t benefiting from
recent innovations local re-
searchers have made in artifi-
cial intelligence, voice and im-
age recognition and self-
driving automobiles because
theyareemployedbyforeign

BYVIPALMONGA

Tech Giants Flock to Toronto

Northern Lights Toronto has a tech talent pool that rivals major U.S. cities, but wages are considerably lower.

Tech workers

Average tech worker salary

*Salary data not available for Dallas/Ft. Worth. Notes: Workers data are as of April 2019. Salaries data are as of 2018 and shown in U.S. dollars. Sources: Bureau of Labor via CBRE (U.S. workers); Statistics Canada via CBRE (Toronto workers); Hired (salaries)

SanFranciscoBayArea

NewYork

Washington,D.C.

Toronto

Dallas/Ft.Worth

Chicago

Boston

353,760

264,374

253,660

228,500

169,290

166,620

160,070

$145,000

$133,000

$123,000

$74,000

$125,000 (Austin*)

$114,000

$127,000

The airline was hit in 2017 by a data breach that exposed the information of up to 825,000 customers.

MARK KAUZLARICH/BLOOMBERG NEWS

Own the Gold of the Rockefellers,

Carnegies and Tiffanys

W

hat’s the first image that comes into your mind when you think of wealth and prosperity? For many of us, it’s tall, shining stacks of gold. For families like the Rockefellers, Carnegies and Tiffanys, that gold took the form of $5 U.S. Gold Liberties, struck by the U.S. Mint in 90% pure American gold. These coins circulated widely in the late 19th and early 20th centuries until President Franklin Roosevelt made private gold ownership illegal in 1933, resulting in the melting of millions of Gold Liberties. It’s estimated that less than 10% of all vintage U.S. gold coins survive. We recently secured a number of these beautiful vintage U.S. gold coins, and now we’d like to pass them on to you. How does that sound, Mr. Rockefeller? Timeless American Treasure Struck between 1866 and 1908, these particular vintage $5 U.S. gold coins were hand-selected just for this offer. Not only are they at least 110 years old, but each one comes professionally certified by one of the world’s top third-party grading services as collector-grade Mint State-62 (MS62) condition—the same condition these were in the day they were struck. Best of all, your coin will come sealed in a protective display holder to preserve its prove- nance for yet another century, creating a golden legacy for you to pass down to future genera- tions. A coin of this quality and history is sure to be treasured for lifetimes. But only if you take advantage of this incredible offer. The Perfect Time to Buy Another great reason to secure these vintage U.S. gold coins, and secure them now , is that premiums for these coins are at a historic low over the cost of their precious metal content alone. Add in the fact that each $5 Gold Liberty was struck more than 110 years ago and comes in certified mint state condition, and you have an added level of collector value that modern, ungraded gold coins can’t reach. These are the coins to buy, and the time to buy is now!

Don’t Miss Out—Secure Your Vintage U.S. Gold Now! In today’s collector market, this same vintage gold coin—containing nearly a quarter-ounce of pure American gold, is currently selling elsewhere for $650. And that’s for a lesser-grade coin. But with this special offer, you can secure these historic U.S. gold coins for just $529 each. But don’t delay—with only a handful of coins available, they’re going to move fast, which is why we’re limiting this offer to 3 coins per household. Don’t let this incredible offer pass you by. To learn more, visit us today at GovMint.com/ goldlib or call 1-888-201-7056 and mention the offer code below to secure your vintage U.S. gold now. FREE SHIPPING!Limited time only. Product total over $149 before taxes (if any). Standard domestic shipping only. Not valid on previous purchases.

Call today toll-free for fastest service 1-888-201-7056 Offer Code FGL215-03 Please mention this code when you call Learn more now at GovMint.com/goldlib

GovMint.com® is a retail distributor of coin and currency issues and is not affiliated with the U.S. government. The collectible coin market is unregulated, highly speculative and involves risk. GovMint.com reserves the right to decline to consummate any sale, within its discretion, including due to pricing errors. Prices, facts, figures and populations deemed accurate as of the date of publication but may change significantly over time. All purchases are expressly conditioned upon your acceptance of GovMint. com’s Terms and Conditions (www.govmint.com/terms-conditions or call 1-800-721-0320); to decline, return your purchase pursuant to GovMint.com’s Return Policy. © 2019 GovMint.com. All rights reserved.

THE BEST SOURCE FOR COINS WORLDWIDE™

GovMint.com • 14101Southcross Dr. W., Suite 175, Dept. FGL215-03, Burnsville, MN 55337

Your coin will arrive graded by NGC or PCGS as Mint State-62 (MS62) condition, sealed in a protective display holder.

Date will vary 22.5 mm diameter

QUANTITY!LIMITED

Only$529each fora110-year-oldcoin withnearlyaquarter-ounce ofU.S.gold!

wsj_20190819_b004_p2jw231000_0_b00400_1____xa2019.crop.pdf 1 19-Aug-19 06:07:05

The Wall Street Journal - 19.08.2019

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