From a post on The Libertarian Standard, about Nina Paley’s latest “Minute Meme” for QuestionCopyright.org (others include the excellent Copying Is Not Theft and All Creative Work is Derivative).

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[“But without copyright what’s to stop people from copying my work and passing it off as their own!” whines the unthinking copyright supporter. Well, here’s one answer. — GAP]

Read more about this cartoon!

~*~

This is a syndicated post, which originally appeared at Mimi and Eunice » IP. View original post.

Nice collection of IP-related Mimi and Eunice cartoons from Nina Paley:

MISINFORMATION WANTS TO BE FREE: 200+ Mimi & Eunice Cartoons by Nina Paley

If you want to see more jobs created – change patent laws

Aug 6th 2011 8:24PM

Sometimes it’s not the obvious things that create the biggest problems.  In this case one of the hidden job killers in our economy today is the explosion of patent litigation.

Every technology company I have is getting hit by patent lawsuits that are the biggest bunch of bullshit ever.  Every week it seems like a new one comes up. Between having to pay our lawyers a lot of money  to review each, to increasing insurance rates and settlement costs because we can’t afford to pay to fight the nonsense, it’s an enormous expense. So much so that money that would have gone to new hires to improve and sell the product has to be saved to pay to deal with this bullshit.

I’m not talking about a new company that had an idea that someone beat us to. No sir. I’m talking about companies that have been doing business the same way for years that are getting hit by patent trolls . These aren’t operating companies that are trying to protect their business. These are companies that aggregate patents and raise capital for the sole purpose of suing companies and extorting money from them.

It’s bad for my little companies. It’s horrific for bigger companies. It’s so bad that  major tech companies are  buying big collections of patents not because they want to own the intellectual property but rather because they want the ability to respond to patent lawsuits with a lawsuit of their own. It’s like playing a game of thermo nuclear war. If all sides have “nuclear patents” they can respond to patent litigation with equal force . Another words, if you have enough “nucleur patents” no one will sue you for patent infringement because you have enough power to respond in kind. Its crazy and costing this country jobs.

Google just spent $900mm buying a patent collection. Other big companies are spending the same way.  That is money that for many companies would have  gone to job creation.

We need to face the facts, patent law is killing job creation. If the current administration wants to improve job creation, change patent law and watch jobs among small technology companies  develop instantly. I know I have at least 1 company that would hire instantly.

From Nielsio on the V is for Voluntary blog:

Innovation in the gaming business model: Humble Indie Bundle

Intellectual property advocates say that the use of information needs to be protected by law. But even in today’s world, where this protection exists, there are commercial developers who are trying business models that are relying less and less on that protection.

The latest example is the Humble Indie Bundle 3. For short periods, they offer a bundle of games with no copy protection, and the customer decides how much to pay. You can pay as little as 1 cent to get the bundle. So actually, these aren’t purchases but instead donations for games that can be gotten for free and shared with friends and family without any problems. The average amount per downloader that is actually given is over $5 (Linux users average more than double that). They’ve raised 1.6 million dollars as of writing and there are still 4 days left in the promotion.

So why are people giving more than a penny? People appreciate what is being offered, and they like to reward that. And when you reward a developer of an enjoyable game, that is offered under favorable terms, then this serves as a signal for that developer to keep doing this work in the future, so that the consumers will have new games to enjoy when they’re done playing the current ones. Essentially, when you donate to a developer, you’re saying: “Please keep doing what you’re doing”.

Music: Pomplamoose

You can see something close to this model occurring in music. The musical duo Pomplamoose release all of their songs in high quality on Youtube. One of their innovations is the VideoSong, which means that even though their songs are often highly mixed, when you hear a sound you will also see them performing it (as it was done live). This makes it more intimate and open.

But because all of their songs can be listened to without limit and downloaded with simple tools, when you purchase their songs (as with the Humble Bundle), it’s practically a donation. So here too, when you donate to them, you’re asking them to keep doing what they’re doing, and giving them the means to do it.
Software: Ardour

The next step up in a business model that doesn’t rely on intellectual property protection is showcased by the free and open source ‘digital audio workstation’ software Ardour (for Linux and Mac). They currently have 252 people with a donation subscription. And they have ‘bug bounties‘ where people can pledge money to have specified problems fixed.

Let’s hope that instead of the old ways, these business models will be copied and improved upon, because it clearly works.

From Jeff Tucker on the Mises blog:

A reader sends this from Tennessean (August 5, 2011 – Cindy Watts; no link I can find):

In the spirit of his Get Closer 2011 World Tour… Keith Urban says that fans’ using their cellphones to photograph and record his shows is just another way for everyone to – as his tour title and latest album proclaim – get closer.

“When you look at what the hand-held phone has become in our lifestyle, it’s so much more than a phone now,” he says. It’s almost a portal in our hands. It’s almost a portal in our hands. It’s how we access and communicate and find out about things in the world. It makes perfect sense for someone who has a camera phone in the audience to be filming it and putting it up online.”

But how far technology – and the touring music industry – has progressed in the past several years isn’t lost on the singer, either.

“When you think about it, it wasn’t that many years ago when it was absolutely no cameras allowed, and now you can film away,” he says with a chuckle. “I look at it and think the Grateful Dead were way ahead of their time allowing people to do bootleg recordings of their concerts. They understood back then that the more you can bring people into the concert experience, even it if is online, the more it’s attracting people to come see the real thing.”

In a previous post (Live by the Sword), I noted this story: Man files antitrust lawsuit over printer ink, and the irony of companies who “actively pursue, support, and employ government monopolies (patents) and use them to squelch competition” getting hammered by anti-trust law.¹

Now comes this report: Toy giant Mattel weighing options after $309 million judgment(h/t Michael Barnett). Turns out Mattel “sued MGA Entertainment Inc. over ownership of the hugely popular Bratz fashion doll line.” In this 2004 lawsuit, Mattel alleged “that Bratz designer Carter Bryant was employed at Mattel when he created the Bratz dolls.” Initially Mattel won a $100M verdict. However, it was overturned on appeal and the case was retried. In the retrial, MGA counterclaimed for trade secrets misappropriation. In the end, “The turbulent legal chapter has now ended with a federal judge ordering Mattel to pay its rival more than $309 million.”

Of course, Mattel is spitting mad that their attempt to wrangle $100M out of MGA ended up with them losing to the tune of $309M–on top of their $400M in legal fees: “‘We are disappointed with the recent rulings on the post-trial motions. Mattel strongly believes that the outcome at the trial level is not supported by the evidence or the law,’ Mattel said in a statement.” Oh well. At least the $309M won by MGA will make up for the $170M they spent on attorneys defending themselves.

Mattel also amusingly said: “we remain committed to finding a reasonable resolution to the litigation, and are focused on our primary goal — to make and sell great toys.” Well if you want to find a reasonable resolution to litigation, don’t institute it. And if your mission is to make and sell great toys, do it, and stop trying to use state monopoly privileges to stop your competitors. Beat your competitors fairly, with better products, rather than using state law to squelch them.

Good for MGA. As for Mattel: live by the IP sword, die by the IP sword.

[Mises]

1. See also my previous post Live by the centralism, die by the centralism. [↩]

I appeared tonight on Adam vs. The Man, talking about drug patents. Our segment runs from about 22:38 to 28:35.

When Peter Detkin was assistant general counsel for Intel, in charge of patents, he used the term “patent extortionist” to refer to companies suing Intel for patent infringement and who were trying to “make a lot of money off a patent that they are not practicing and have no intention of practicing and in most cases never practiced.” This “extortion” accusation got Intel sued for libel (a type of defamation), since it can be defamation to falsely accuse someone of a “crime”: extortion is a crime, but the law does not regard use of lawsuits as extortion, since it’s legal. So while using the threat of lawsuits to “shakedown” your victims for money is similar to extortion, the difference is that it’s legal, while extortion is criminal. Similarly, taxation is similar to theft except that the state makes taxation legal, so that it is not officially included in the state’s definition of “theft.”

So Detkin came up with the term “patent troll” instead of “patent extortionist,” to avoid libel claims, and the term stuck.

Later, Detkin co-founded Intellectual Ventures, which some characterize as patent troll (as revealed in this NPR report, When Patents Attack, IV is apparently closely connected with Lodsys, the patent troll suing iOS developers for patent infringement). This interesting comment in the NPR piece indicates Detkin’s attempt to avoid his own patent troll label being applied to his new company:

As it happens, Detkin is the man who coined the term “patent troll.” He came up with it back in in 1999, when he was working for Intel.

We asked him how it feels to make money from an entity that’s behaving much like the patent trolls he once condemned [note: this refers to Oasis Research, a patent troll suing others using a former IV patent, which IV has a “back-end” deal with: as Detkin said “We sell [our patent to Oasis] for some amount of money up front, and we get some percentage of the royalty stream down the road that is generated from these assets.”]. He said:

These are patents we used to hold, we no longer hold. And we ensure that we have no control over the actions of these third parties. They are independent actors. They are not Intellectual Ventures. They may be monetizing in ways we disagree with, but it’s not our call.

…we believe in our heart that litigation is a highly inefficient way to do licensing. But let’s not lose sight that litigation is just licensing by other means.

In other words, we try to license these patents in a friendly way. But sometimes, you have to sue.

In other words, in response to the threat of the libel (itself a type of IP–a property right in “reputation”), patent attorney Detkin coined the term patent troll as a safer way to criticize people harming his company via IP. And then co-founded Intellectual Ventures.

[Mises]

I’ve argued before¹ that most patent and copyright reform efforts are tepid and don’t propose any radical or even significant improvements; in fact most suggested changes only make things worse.

Finally, some apparently changes coming that, while not extremely radical, could make some non-trivial improvement to copyright law–at least in the UK. See this report from arstechnica:

Shock, awe: British government agrees that copyright has gone too far

By Timothy B. Lee | Published a day ago

The British government today pledged (PDF) to enact significant changes to copyright law, including orphan works reforms and the introduction of new copyright exceptions. And the tone of the comments was surprising: the government agrees that “copyright currently over-regulates to the detriment of the UK.” CD (and perhaps DVD) ripping for personal use should become legal at last—and the government is even keen to see that the consumer rights granted by law can’t simply be taken away by contract (such as a “EULA” sticker on a CD demanding that a disk not be ripped).

Responding to an independent study done earlier this year, the government has also endorsed the creation of a digital copyright exchange to facilitate licensing. Within limits, the government endorses the view that “the widest possible exceptions to copyright within the existing EU framework are likely to be beneficial to the UK.”

The government’s report is also significant for what it pledges not to do. The government says it will not bring forward the “site blocking” provisions of last year’s Digital Economy Act. This is evidently not referring to the power of copyright holders to compel individual ISPs to block infringing sites after a lawsuit, but to a more comprehensive system whereby the government maintains a list of sites that all ISPs in the country would be required to block.

Probably the most important announcement is the expansion of copyright exceptions. Unlike the US, the UK does not have a broad, judge-made “fair use” doctrine that allows transformative uses of copyrighted works. Today’s report doesn’t use the phrase “fair use,” but it endorses legalizing many of the same ideas. The government proposes to create “a limited private copying exception,” to “widen the exception for non-commercial research,” to “widen the exception for library archiving,” and “to introduce an exception for parody.”

Orphan works are out-of-print works that cannot be used by anyone because their copyright holders cannot be found. Legislation to address the problem has languished in the US Congress for years. The British government has now pledged to enact orphan works reform that would allow “both commercial and cultural uses of orphan works,” once a prospective user has conducted a diligent search for the copyright holder and paid standard licensing fees.

The report devotes significant attention to the creation of a Digital Copyright Exchange, a centralized clearinghouse to improve the efficiency of copyright licensing efforts. The project is still in the planning phase and participation in the scheme would be voluntary. But the government vows to study ways to encourage and facilitate the creation of an exchange. One way it will do that is by ensuring that the government’s own “Crown copyright” works will be available for licensing.

Patents receive only a brief mention in the report. The government pledges to “resist extensions of patents into sectors which are currently excluded unless there is clear evidence of a benefit to innovation and growth.” It also promises to investigate the problems created by patent thickets, although it doesn’t endorse any specific proposal for addressing the problem.

Read more>>

See also: Kroes wants copyright as a building block, not a stumbling block; Doctorow: Handicapping the horse-race for Canada’s new copyright bill;UK copyright laws to be reviewed, announces Cameron.

1. “Reducing the Cost of IP Law” [↩]

From New World Notes:

Wall Street Journal Puts Second Life’s Virtual Animal Lawsuit on the Front Page

Bunneh v. Horsie goes bigtime! Amaretto Ranch Breedables, LLC v. Ozimals, Inc., a copyright infringement lawsuit which pits the creators of two competing Second Life animal breeds, was featured last weekend on the front page of the Wall Street Journal. The WSJ doesn’t add much to what’s already been written, except for two interesting bits:

A proposed settlement would keep Amaretto’s virtual horses alive — as long as the horse food (the company’s main revenue source) was made free …

Read more>>

From a Patterson Belknap alert:

Gene Patenting: Federal Circuit Upholds Patents to Isolated DNA

On Friday, the Federal Circuit issued its highly anticipated decision in Association for Molecular Pathology, et al. v. Myriad Genetics. The Federal Circuit held that isolated DNA sequences (both genomic DNA and cDNA) are patentable subject matter, while Myriad’s claims for “comparing” or “analyzing” DNA sequences to identify mutations in patients’ genes only required abstract mental steps and were ineligible for patent protection. The decision rejects the position of the Obama administration, which had filed an amicus brief arguing that isolated genomic DNA should not be patentable, and conforms with the settled expectations of the biotechnology industry and long-standing practice of the Patent Office to issue patents to isolated DNAs.

See more posts regarding gene patents.

According to this (somewhat vague) report, “Court of Appeal upholds copyright in web headlines” (h/t Jock Coats). It’s not clear if this is copyright in headlines themselves or some kind of aggregations thereof, but at least in US law short titles are generally not protectable by copyright (one reason some movies and novels can have the same title).

This result reminds me of something I noted here:

German Publishers Want Monopoly On Sentences (in Germany, newspaper publishers are lobbying for ‘a new exclusive right conferring the power to monopolize speech e.g. by assigning a right to re-use a particular wording in the headline of a news article anywhere else without the permission of the rights holder)