I was out on vacation last week and a lost of IP-related news came to my attention, all of which I blogged at C4SIF. Here are some snippets:
Your Start-Up Isn’t Unique, But That Doesn’t Matter
by Stephan Kinsella on July 9, 2011
Fantastic insights in this Business Insider piece:
Your Start-Up Isn’t Unique, But That Doesn’t Matter
I’m a huge fan of Kirby Ferguson’s Everything is a Remix series. If you haven’t watched the first three installments, you can (and should) do so here.The series lays out the persuasive case that big, important breakthroughs in science and technology are emergent phenomenon. That is, they arise organically out of our collective, cumulative knowledge. An “invention” is simply a historically demarcated tipping point on a continuous path of progress.
Fittingly, Furguson isn’t the first to point this out.
Henry Ford said:
Progress happens when all the factors that make for it are ready and then it is inevitable. To teach that a comparatively few men are responsible for the greatest forward steps of mankind is the worst sort of nonsense.
And long before Ford, the 18th century mathematician Farkas Bolyai vividly observed:
When the time is ripe for certain things, they appear at different places in the manner of violets coming to light in early spring.
One of the remarkable implications of this theory of invention is that it de-emphasizes the individual innovator. Not only are notable inventors standing on the shoulders of those who came before, but even their particular contributions are often made by others simultaneously: Alexander Graham Bell and Elisha Gray patented the telephone on the same day; Charles Darwin and Alfred Russel Wallace independently advanced a theory of evolution; and Isaac Newton, Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz, and others have all been credited with inventing calculus.
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Tucker: Show Love to the Merchant Class
by Stephan Kinsella on July 9, 2011
Great IP-related insights in Jeff Tucker’s article Show Love to the Merchant Class:
Then there’s the competition. Anyone is free to copy and replicate your successes. The more you succeed, the more you inspire imitators who are pleased to do exactly what you do but somehow manage to do it at a lower price. This means that you must constantly stay on your toes and innovate. At the same time, you have to constantly watch your back. A bad day of sales could mean nothing or it could mean everything. It could be a bump on the road to glory or the foreshadowing of disaster. There’s no way to know for sure.
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Debunking Some Big Myths About Patents
July 9, 2011
Mike Masnick highlights a great post: Debunking Some Big Myths About Patents from the stop-using-these-arguments dept Rick Falkvinge recently put together an excellent post debunking ten of the common myths you hear about patents. Here’s a taste: Myth 2: Patents drive innovation. Fact: Patents do not drive innovation, they ban innovation. A patent is, by its [...]
Jesus: Bread Pirate
July 8, 2011
Great cartoon from Nerfnow mocking the idea of intellectual property:
Warner Bros. Wins Key Legal Ruling Impacting All ‘Wizard of Oz’ Remakes
July 8, 2011
From : Warner Bros. Wins Key Legal Ruling Impacting All ‘Wizard of Oz’ Remakes (Exclusive) The Eighth Circuit Court of Appeals hands down a potentially big decision on some iconic characters thought by many to be outside copyright protection. 11:40 AM 7/6/2011 by Eriq Gardner In 1900, L. Frank Baum wrote the famous children’s novel, [...]
Tucker: Innovations in Technology
July 8, 2011
Jeff Tucker gives a riveting, fascinating discussion of innovation and related matters centered around the 1893 World’s Fair in Chicago. Video and audio are here.
90+ Internet law and IP law professors sign anti-PROTECT-IP letter…
July 8, 2011
From HammerofTruth: 90+ Internet law and IP law professors sign anti-PROTECT-IP letter… “The Act fails this Constitutional test. It authorizes courts to take websites “out of circulation” – to make them unreachable by and invisible to Internet users in the United States and abroad — immediately upon application by the Attorney General after an ex parte [...]
Can patent licensing fees derail the Android express?
July 8, 2011
From Gigaom, a post noting that patents may end up killing or seriously damaging the Android smartphone iphone competitor (like patents apparently killed SED TV): Can patent licensing fees derail the Android express? By Ryan Kim Jul. 8, 2011, 4:00pm PT 8 Comments The Android Express has taken Google and a number of manufacturers on dizzying ride to [...]
Lawyer Attempts To Trademark Bitcoin
July 8, 2011
From Slashdot: Lawyer Attempts To Trademark Bitcoin Posted by samzenpus on Thursday July 07, @08:02AM from the said-it-first dept. An anonymous reader writes “A NY based lawyer has submitted an application to the US Patent and Trademark Office claiming first use of the term bitcoin on June 22nd, 2011. The evidence of first use in [...]
Copyright, copyleft and everything in between
July 8, 2011
From Infochange India: Copyright, copyleft and everything in between By Frederick Noronha Filmmaker Paromita Vohra talks about her new film Partners in Crime, which explores issues around copyright, copyleft, culture and markets, and suggests that we might need a hybrid notion of copyright in which many forms coexist, just as we may need many markets [...]
Top ISPs agree to become copyright cops
July 8, 2011
Unsurprising, but unpleasant, development: Top ISPs agree to become copyright cops by Greg Sandoval Some of the top ISPs, including Comcast, Cablevision, Verizon, and Time Warner Cable, have officially agreed to step up efforts to protect the rights of copyright owners, a move first reported last month by CNET. “Leaders from the movie, television, music [...]
Nina Paley’s “Rantifesto”: Why are the Freedoms guaranteed for Free Software not guaranteed for Free Culture?
July 8, 2011
Great post by Nina Paley: RANTIFESTO Adapted from a talk and slide show I presented at the Open Knowledge Conference in Berlin on July 1, 2011. –NP Why are the Freedoms guaranteed for Free Software not guaranteed for Free Culture? Free software is a matter of the users’ freedom to run, copy, distribute, study, change [...]
Patentee Tries to Force Ford to Make Less Safe Cars
July 8, 2011
As reported in Report: Ford named in patent infringement case over SYNC, safety systems: Eagle Harbor Holdings has named Ford in a lawsuit, contending that the automaker infringed on seven of its patents after talks between the two companies stalled out in 2008 – and the claimed infringements strike right at the heart of Ford’s [...]
Ganging Up on Internet Pirates: Hollywood, Telecom Providers Unite to Target Those Who Share Copyrighted Films, Music
July 8, 2011
From WSJ Online. Horrible. BY ETHAN SMITH AND GEOFFREY A. FOWLER Internet users who share pirated movies and music online may soon be getting an unpleasant surprise: Warnings from their cable and phone providers that detail alleged copyright infringement and threaten to slow their Web connections if they don’t stop. The new so-called Copyright Alert [...]
Christopher Sprigman on IP and the Fashion Industry
July 3, 2011
Interesting articles on IP by law professor Chris Sprigman: “Where IP Isn’t,” by Kal Raustiala and Christopher Jon Sprigman Virginia Law Review, In Brief, January 22, 2007 UCLA School of Law Research Paper No. 07-05 Abstract: The orthodox argument for IP proceeds in three steps. First, creative works are often difficult and expensive to create – think [...]
Doctorow: India’s amazing statement on IP and international development
July 3, 2011
A 2005 Boingboing post by Cory Doctorow: India’s amazing statement on IP and international development POSTED BY CORY DOCTOROW, APRIL 15, 2005 7:52 AM | PERMALINK Earlier this week at the UN World Intellectual Property Organization (WIPO), there was a meeting to talk about how to reform the org to make it into a humanitarian agency that [...]
Cat-v: “The ‘intellectual property’ oxymoron”
July 3, 2011
From Cat-V, a great entry about IP: The ‘intellectual property’ oxymoron “If nature has made any one thing less susceptible than all others of exclusive property, it is the action of the thinking power called an idea, which an individual may exclusively possess as long as he keeps it to himself; but the moment it [...]
The Mythology of Intellectual Property
July 3, 2011
Nice post from 2009 by Chad Perrin/”apotheon”: The Mythology of Intellectual Property Note: I originally re-posted the original but the author complained and cited some copyright-backed requirement that even I, an 18 year IP lawyer, do not quite get, so I just removed it. Click the link above and read it if you want. Note [...]
Milton Friedman on the Distorting Effect of Patents
July 3, 2011
Friedman wrote, in Capitalism and Freedom: there are many “inventions” that are not patentable. The “inventor” of the supermarket, for example, conferred great benefits on his fellowmen for which he could not charge them. Insofar as the same kind of ability is required for the one kind of invention as for the other, the existence [...]
Interactive Graphic Pretends to Illustrate How U.S. Patent System Has Driven American Economy
July 2, 2011
Interactive Graphic Illustrates How U.S. Patent System Has Driven American Economy notes: Last month, the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel published two articles documenting the current state of the U.S. patent system (see “The Milwaukee Journal Sentinel Gets It Right about Patents“). The authors of those pieces, John Schmid and Ben Poston, have now compiled an interactive [...]
Are Patents Needed to Make Up for FDA Kneecapping?
July 2, 2011
Even some opponents of IP sometimes say that the case for patents is strongest in the field of chemicals and pharmaceuticals,1 although this empirical/utilitarian argument is eviscerated in ch. 9 of Boldrin & Levine’s Against Intellectual Monopoly. A friend told me: I think there may be a slightly stronger argument that patents are more economically [...]
Nortel Patents Sold for $4.5 Billion to Consortium Which Includes Apple
July 1, 2011
From Macrumours: Nortel announced that they had concluded an auction to sell of its patents and patent applications to a consortium consisting of Apple, EMC, Ericsson, Microsoft, RIM and Sony. The final winning bid was $4.5 billion and includes over 6,000 patents and patent applications covering wireless, 4G, networking optical, voice internet, semiconductors and more. [...]
Musopen: Record and release free music without copyrights: the heroic Kickstarter
June 29, 2011
Cool Kickstarter project. Sad we have to pay a ransom to free music, but still, given the tyrannical IP system, this is heroic: Musopen: Record and release free music without copyrights. A Classical Music project in Palo Alto, CA by Aaron Dunn • send message About this project If you feel like donating once the [...]
The IP War on 3D Printing Begins
June 28, 2011
See Paramount Cease and Desist Targets 3D Printer ‘Pirate’. See also my post White paper on 3D printing and the law: the coming copyfight. Congratulations, IP libertarians–IP is about to strangle the next new breakthrough technology.
Back to the Internet ‘stone ages’ for the NBA
June 27, 2011
… because of copyright. See this ESPN article: Back to the Internet ‘stone ages’ for the NBA. As noted there, Take a spin today through the NBA’s digital space and you’ll encounter the usual stuff. There’s a menacing Kevin Garnett atop the Celtics’ site, with an image of Rajon Rondo on the right margin alongside [...]
The Power of Open: Stories of Creative Commons success
June 25, 2011
This is a fantastic book. Some of the more interesting and inspiring profiles include TED Talks, Nina Paley, Bloomsbury Academic, Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum’s “Classical Music for the Masses” (see their amazing podcast, The Concert, which “has made world-class performances recorded live at the museum available to listeners across the globe”), Khan Academy, and the [...]
Nobel Prize Winning Physicist Explains How Intellectual Property Damages Innovation
June 24, 2011
See the 2008 post below, from Mike Masnick. It concerns Nobel Prize winning physicist Robert B. Laughlin, author of The Crime of Reason and the Closing of the Scientific Mind. As can be seen in this Cato podcast, Intellectual Property Versus Reason, and in the notes for this related Cato book forum, Though we may [...]
The PROTECT IP Act Will Slow Start-up Innovation
June 23, 2011
From Union Square Ventures: The PROTECT IP Act Will Slow Start-up Innovation. Sure they are right. But I get tired of seeing people oppose “new extensions” of or “abuses of” IP law. They are so concrete bound and unprincipled (not sure if these guys are; I’m making a general comment); they never oppose IP in [...]
First, we kill all the patent lawyers
June 23, 2011
Nice piece in Computerworld. However, the author buys into the standard reasoning: “In the beginning, the U.S. patent system was meant to encourage inventors and innovation.” He is talking about “abuse”. We’ve gone “too far.” He wants business method and software patents eliminated. Why just them? Here is my comment, posted there: Nice post. But [...]
First U.S. Patent Laws Were First to File, Not First to Invent
June 23, 2011
Gene Quinn argues that First U.S. Patent Laws Were First to File, Not First to Invent. I’m not 100% sure I buy his argument, but it seems reasonable enough. The reason this comes up is the US has always had a first to invent system, unlike other countries which are mostly first to file (unless [...]
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Stephan:
This is off topic, but hopefully, in spirit.
http://www.itworld.com/it-managementstrategy/178091/how-america-losing-its-tech-mojo-and-how-it-can-get-it-back
“If you can’t innovate, litigate.”
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