Martha Stewart Living and Macy’s Settle Dispute and Keep Partnership

On Thursday, Macy’s and Martha Stewart announced that they had settled the breach-of-contract case, saying the details were confidential and not material to either company. They said their partnership would continue, but declined to comment further.

Macy’s larger suit against J. C. Penney still remains. Macy’s said the settlement with Martha Stewart Living would not affect that case.

Macy’s and Martha Stewart Living joined forces in 2006 with an agreement to sell “Martha Stewart” branded products in Macy’s stores, including exclusive items like kitchenware and bedding. The partnership has done well over the years, accounting for $250 million in sales in 2012.

But Martha Stewart Living and J. C. Penney announced a deal in 2011 to sell home décor products out of Martha Stewart store-within-a-store locations at Penney’s stores. The move was part of a broader turnaround effort by J. C. Penney’s previous chief executive, Ron Johnson, who was fired last year as losses mounted at the retailer.

After the deal was announced, Macy’s sued them both, saying the deal violated the terms of its original contract with Martha Stewart Living. The retailer called for pulling certain items off Penney’s shelves and demanded compensation for loss of profits. Penney and Martha Stewart Living countered that their agreement fell into an exception carved out in the Macy’s contract.

Days before a judge was expected to rule on the Penney case, Penney and Martha Stewart Living backed down, revising their agreement to exclude kitchen, bed and bath products, items that the Macy’s suit said were exclusive. In effect, J. C. Penney gave up many core home décor products and was left with items like rugs and window treatments.

Theodore M. Grossman of the Jones Day law firm, the lead counsel for Macy’s in the case, said at the time that the new agreement “was a complete surrender.”

With the settlement, Martha Stewart Living puts to rest a costly and contentious case. In October, Martha Stewart Living reported a disappointing third quarter, partly because the diminished relationship with J. C. Penney had cut into revenue. J. C. Penney has shown some signs of improvement in recent months, although it continues to post losses.

Macy’s has been a standout. The company’s earnings per share increased 31 percent over the same period the year before, easily beating analysts’ expectations.

Bits Blog: The New Economics Behind the Oracle-Dell Partnership

Kimihiro Hoshino/Agence France-Presse — Getty Images

This week, Dell and Oracle announced a partnership unique to both companies. Dell would offer Oracle software on its machines and would resell Oracle services. Much head-scratching ensued among industry analysts, largely over misunderstandings about where the industry was headed.

What bothered many of these analysts was the idea that both Dell and Oracle sell commodity servers based on Intel’s x86 reference designs. Oracle picked up that business when it acquired Sun Microsystems for $7.4 billion in 2010. Sun was never a big player in that business, however, having come to it late and grudgingly. It always preferred its own machines, which used the Sparc chip.

From the Sun deal, Oracle got many loyal (or locked-in) Sparc customers and insights to make the combined hardware and software “engineered systems” that advanced its in-memory data and analytics products. If it ever wanted to compete with Dell or Hewlett-Packard on commodity servers, it doesn’t want to now. In its third fiscal quarter, Oracle had hardware revenue of $671 million, down 23 percent. Much of that was faltering x86 sales.

What Oracle still wants, and Dell can offer, is exposure to smaller and midsize companies, which Oracle’s high-ticket sales force has trouble reaching.

“Oracle has a phenomenal engine into the top 500 enterprise accounts worldwide,” said Marius Haas, the head of Dell’s enterprise business. “They’d like to go after the broader market, and we’ve got a great relationship with companies there.”

There is also some bad blood behind this story: Mr. Haas worked at Hewlett-Packard when Mark Hurd was its chief executive. He left during Léo Apotheker’s brief tenure at the top of H.P., after Mr. Hurd’s resignation in August 2010.

So putting a little more pressure on H.P. probably sweetened the deal. Mr. Haas said this week’s announcement could lead to Dell selling even more Oracle products, both applications and databases. It appears to be the first time that Oracle has entrusted another company to sell its services. Even Oracle’s enemies like SAP and I.B.M. resell Oracle databases.

More important is what the deal says about selling hardware these days: Compared with even five years ago, companies are being forced to add more capabilities to their products.

It’s not just that Oracle is fusing high-performance hardware and software, or Dell is shipping servers preloaded with Oracle products.

At the bottom of the food chain, Taiwanese companies like Quanta and Delta, which used to make motherboards that go inside servers, now sell shrink-wrapped racks of servers for big data centers. No one there cares about the brand; they care about price. Even below any kind of systems level, Intel is increasing the capability of its chips and buying software companies.

Thanks to clouds, mobility, sensors and big networks, there is so much computing around now that it has changed everyone’s economics. For a while, that creates new alliances and tensions.

Penn State Law School Establishes Partnership With Dubai Institute

By Karen SloanAll Articles

The National Law Journal

September 14, 2012

The Persian Gulf is turning into the destination du jour for American law schools looking for academic partnerships.

Harvard Law School's Institute for Global Law and Policy last month announced that it is helping the Qatar Foundation develop a graduate legal training institute in Doha, Qatar. Now, the Pennsylvania State University Dickinson School of Law will collaborate with the Dubai Judicial Institute in the United Arab Emirates.

Under the agreement, the schools will foster research partnerships, joint conferences, faculty exchanges and practice opportunities for students. The programs will offer students and faculty insight into the increasingly international practice of law, according to officials from both schools.

"For example, Penn State law students and faculty will be able to create a study visit to the DJI to learn about law and legal institutions of the UAE and to experience a unique commercial hub in the Middle East," said Penn State dean Philip McConnaughay.

The partnership will support the mission of the Dubai Judicial Institute, said director general Al Sumaiti -- to train attorneys and judges and conduct research. The institute was founded in 1996 and also offers training for prosecutors and private and public sector agencies.

"We are committed to fostering and adopting initiatives to build on the potential of law students and welcome the opportunity to work with Penn State Law in what will most certainly be a successful and beneficial partnership," Sumaiti said in a written statement.

Karen Bysiewicz, Penn State's associate dean of graduate and international programs, said students have shown a growing interest in the Middle East. "Moreover, Penn State Law is well-positioned to be involved in trainings of lawyers and judges internationally," she said. "We have a number of judges or former judges on our faculty. We also have faculty members with significant international research, as well an extensive collaboration with the Penn State School of International Affairs."