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):
The Android Express has taken Google and a number of manufacturers on dizzying ride to the top of the smartphone market. But with Android’s patent strength increasingly under fire and companies lining up for their share of licensing fees, is the platform headed off the tracks? Read More »
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 the form of a letter detailing his wife’s offer to sell “bitcoin” for $17.50 on June 23rd. A pdf extolling the virtues of bitcoin has also been uploaded to his law firms webpage”
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 based on many different ideas of exchange
From urban Indian streets where young men furtively sell porn to folk musicians who find their ideas stolen, from corporate boardrooms to students who seek new ways of sharing music… Paromita Vohra covers these and more in her latest film Partners in Crime.
She describes it as “a rollicking trip through the grey worlds of copyright, art, and the market in a story about love, money and crime”.
Mumbai-based Vohra has earned praise for her interesting documentaries and her innovative ways of distribution.
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 and Internet service provider communities today announced a landmark agreement on a common framework for ‘Copyright Alerts,'” the parties said today in a statement. Copyright Alerts “will educate and notify Internet subscribers when their Internet service accounts possibly are being misused for online content theft. This voluntary landmark collaboration will educate subscribers about content theft on their Internet accounts, benefiting consumers and copyright holders alike.”
Many file-sharing fans and proponents of free content are to sure mock the assertion that this is a benefit to them.
This agreement hands the music and film sectors a big new stick with which to fight online illegal downloading of copyrighted works. The deal doesn’t affect illegal streaming services. The film, music, and software sectors claim that online piracy costs the U.S. economy billions in lost revenue and jobs.
The Recording Industry Association of America (RIAA) and Motion Picture Association of America (MPAA), the respective trade groups for the four major record companies and six top Hollywood film studios, have labored for years to persuade ISPs to take a tougher antipiracy position.
Media companies and Internet providers have agreed on a system to put the brakes on the service of users of illegal file-sharing services. The ISPs have agreed to alert customers up to six times if they believe their account is being used to illegally download music and movie, Reuters reports. After repeated warnings via email or pop-up windows, offenders will have their Internet speed slowed down or could find themselves redirected to an educational page about copyright law. Consumers will be allowed to appeal and ISPs won’t be allowed to disclose their identities to the entertainment industry.
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 and improve the software. More precisely, it means that the program’s users have the four essential freedoms:
The freedom to run the program, for any purpose (freedom 0).
The freedom to study how the program works, and change it to make it do what you wish (freedom 1). Access to the source code is a precondition for this.
The freedom to redistribute copies so you can help your neighbor (freedom 2).
The freedom to distribute copies of your modified versions to others (freedom 3). By doing this you can give the whole community a chance to benefit from your changes. Access to the source code is a precondition for this.
These are the Four Freedoms of Free Software. They are foundational principles, and they are exactly right. They have served and continue to serve the Free Software Movement very well. They place the user’s freedom ahead of all other concerns. Free Software is a principled movement, but Free Culture is not – at least not so far. Why?
Paley heroically calls to task the advocates of “free culture” for hypocrisy, e.g. in their use of -ND (no derivative works) and -NC (no commercial use) limitations on non-software, “cultural” works.
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 recent tech expansion.
In addition to claiming that Ford cribbed its technology for Active Park Assist, Stability Control, Blind Spot Information with Cross Traffic Alert and MyKey, the small Bainbridge Island, WA tech firm claims that the technology behind Ford’s incredibly popular SYNC infotainment system. Specifically, the voice control and remote MP3 player connection technology.
Of course the patentee here probably just wants money, but its basis for any damages it requests is based on its implicit threat to seek an injunction to prevent Ford from using features–such as voice control–that can save lives. Yet another case of patents endangering human life (for another: the Fabrazyme situation).
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 System was created by a coalition of major film studios, record labels and Internet-service providers, who agreed to guidelines for identifying and notifying Web users who violate copyrights.
Among the ISPs that have pledged to implement the new policy are Comcast Corp., AT&T Inc., Time Warner Cable Inc., Cablevision Systems Corp. and Verizon Communications Inc.
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 of the poet in pursuit of the right verse, or pizza-fueled late nights spent programming a new video game. Second, once the author or inventor produces the first version of a work, others will find it quick and cheap to copy the work. Third, unless the law equips the creator with enforceable exclusive rights, the copyist, having invested nothing in the creation of the work, will outcompete the originator and deny her a return on her investment. The practices of the fashion industry are hard to square with the traditional justification. The global fashion industry produces a huge variety of creative goods without strong IP protection in one of its biggest markets (the United States), and without apparent utilization of nominally strong IP rights in another large market (the countries of the European Union). Copying and derivative re-working of fashion designs are rampant in both the U.S. and E.U., as the traditional account would predict. Yet innovation and investment remain vibrant.
Why, when other major content industries have obtained increasingly powerful IP protections for their products, does fashion design remain mostly unprotected – and economically successful? We argue that the fashion industry counter-intuitively operates within a low-IP equilibrium in which copying does not deter innovation and may actually promote it. We call this the piracy paradox. Our article offers a model explaining how the fashion industry’s piracy paradox works, and how copying functions as an important element of, and perhaps even a necessary predicate to, the industry’s swift cycle of innovation. In so doing, we aim to shed light on the creative dynamics of the apparel industry. But we also hope to spark further exploration of a fundamental question of IP policy: to what degree are IP rights necessary to induce innovation in particular industries? Are stable low-IP equilibria imaginable outside of the fashion industry?
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 promotes development, not monopoly rights for publishing and pharmaceutical companies.
India’s statement from the floor was so good it should be taught in universities. Check it out:
The real “development” imperative is ensuring that the interest of Intellectual Property owners is not secured at the expense of the users of IP, of consumers at large, and of public policy in general. The proposal therefore seeks to incorporate int international IP law and practice, what developing countries have been demanding since TRIPS was forced on them in 1994.The primary rationale for Intellectual Property protection is, first and foremost, to promote societal development by encouraging technological innovation. The legal monopoly granted to IP owners is an exceptional departure from the general principle of competitive markets as the best guarantee for securing the interest of society. The rationale for the exception is not that extraction of monopoly profits by the innovator is, of and in itself, good for society and so needs to be promoted. Rather, that properly controlled, such a monopoly, by providing an incentive for innovation, might produce sufficient benefits for society to compensate for the immediate loss to consumers as a result of the existence of a monopoly market instead of a competitive market. Monopoly rights, then, granted to IP holders is a special incentive that needs to be carefully calibrated by each country, in the light of its own circumstances, taking into account the overall costs and benefits of such protection.
“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 is divulged, it forces itself into the possession of everyone, and the receiver cannot dispossess himself of it. Its peculiar character, too, is that no one possesses the less, because every other possesses the whole of it. He who receives an idea from me, receives instruction himself without lessening mine; as he who lights his taper at mine, receives light without darkening me. That ideas should freely spread from one to another over the globe, for the moral and mutual instruction of man, and improvement of his condition, seems to have been peculiarly and benevolently designed by nature, when she made them, like fire, expansible over all space, without lessening their density in any point, and like the air in which we breathe, move, and have our physical being, incapable of confinement or exclusive appropriation. Inventions then cannot, in nature, be a subject of property.”
— Thomas Jefferson
“I personally think intellectual property is an oxymoron. Physical objects have a completely different natural economy than intellectual goods. It’s a tricky thing to try to own something that remains in your possession even after you give it to many others.”
-- John Perry Barlow
“Royalties are not how most writers or musicians make their living. Musicians by and large make a living with a relationship with an audience that is economically harnessed through performance and ticket sales.”
-- John Perry Barlow
Government granted monopolies have unintended consequences
So called ‘intellectual property’ laws are basically government granted monopolies, that while intending to encourage creativity have exactly the opposite effect.
Many examples and studies have shown the harmful effects of copyright and patents, but the reasons for this effects would be much more clear if one realizes that copyrights and patents are dramatic and arbitrary restrictions of both freedom of expression and free trade.
Like with any other government regulations, it is not surprising that big corporations (eg., Microsoft and Monsanto) use them to stifle competition; and other special interests (eg., the Church of Scientology) use them to censor criticisms and further their own agendas.
Aside from all the abuses and unintended consequences, copyright and patents are a great obstacle to creativity and innovation: the creations of all great thinkers, inventors and artists in history would never have been possible in a vacuum and always depend on a context consisting of all the preexisting works and ideas.
Copying isn’t theft
“Copying isn’t theft, and it isn’t piracy. It’s what we did for millennia until the invention of copyright, and we can do it again, if we don’t hobble ourselves with the antiquated remnants of a censorship system from the sixteenth century.” — Karl Fogel [continue reading…]
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 2: as seen in the comments apparently I misunderstood his note to me. I have re-posted his original post below. As also seen in the comments he seems to want some “OWL” license included, which I have been unable to fully grok–“The text of this may be redistributed under the terms of the Open Works License, as indicated on the page from which it was harvested. The Open Works License should have accompanied this copy of the article.” FWIW.
Intellectual Property may be the most pernicious myth of our time. The lies, misunderstandings, and myths of Intellectual Property so obscure the truth about copyright, patent, and trademark law that even those of us who oppose such legalisms must still work to shake loose our last remaining illusions. It seems like every few months I stumble across yet another insight into the nature of so-called Intellectual Property that leaves me surprised I never noticed the flaw in my thinking, and aghast at how deeply rooted the mythology of Intellectul Property has become. [continue reading…]
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 of patents tends to divert activity to patentable inventions.
As I noted in The Forgotten Costs of the Patent System, the patent system “skews resources away from theoretical R&D and toward practical gizmos and applications, which surely has some cost as well”. Friedman recognized this, but still, bizarrely, supported patents (though he wanted shorter terms). Rothbard also recognized this,1 but, unlike Friedman, opposed patents (sort of; he supported “common law” or “contractual” copyright which includes inventions like mousetraps).2
Update:
See on this also Arnold Plant, “The Economic Theory Concerning Patents for Inventions,” p. 43. As Rothbard writes (Man, Economy, and State, pp. 658–59): “It is by no means self-evident that patents encourage an increased absolute quantity of research expenditures. But certainly patents distort the type of research expenditure being conducted. . . . Research expenditures are therefore overstimulated in the early stages before anyone has a patent, and they are unduly restricted in the period after the patent is received. In addition, some inventions are considered patentable, while others are not. The patent system then has the further effect of artificially stimulating research expenditures in the patentable areas, while artificially restricting research in the nonpatentable areas.” See also Milton Friedman on the Distorting Effect of Patents.
See also Petra Moser, Patents and Innovation in Economic History (Feb. 2016): “when patent rights have been too broad or strong, they have actually discouraged innovation”. “Moser looks at the products exhibited at the World Exhibitions of the late nineteenth century and asks whether the presence or absence of patent systems across countries affected the types of industries that emerged. She finds that countries that either lacked patent systems entirely or that had weakly enforced patents tended to focus on a small set of industries that depended on technologies that could not be backward engineered, such as the manufacture of scientific instruments.”.
See also See p. 21 of Machlup & Penrose, “The Patent Controversy in the Nineteenth Century” (1950), pointing out that in the late 1800s debate over patents, “Some writers held that patents may promote technological innovation in earlier stages of industrial development while at more advanced stages they become retarding influences.”
See Rothbard:
It is by no means self-evident that patents encourage an increased absolute quantity of research expenditures. But certainly patents distort the type of research expenditure being conducted. For while it is true that the first discoverer benefits from the privilege, it is also true that competitors are excluded from production in the area of the patent for many years… Moreover, the patentee is himself discouraged from engaging in further research in this field, for the privilege permits him to rest on his laurels ….
IP Watchdog: “Inventing with Intent: Where Engineering Rigor Meets Business Reality“, an interview with prolific inventor/patentee Fred Shelton, who has more than 3000 patents. Of course Shelton, like buffoon and patent shill Gene Quinn, are in favor of patents. Shocker! But Shelton inadvertently reveals how patents are distorting to inventive activity, as noted above. From the transcript:
[33:38] … maybe it’s just a corporate thing. I don’t that I’ve ever come across [some corporate client saying] “I don’t want to provide the patent person with what they need.” What I do think I’ve seen is an engineer on a team has an idea, the corporation and the the business leadership decides they want to do something with it. They don’t want the engineer distracted. They take whatever they’ve have, put it into a ball, and throw it over the fence and say, “File this.” I would agree that doesn’t end up being a very powerful thing because again the inventor came up with a single solution in their one little area.
They don’t realize multiple embodiments matter. They don’t realize their answer is a third of the total answer, not all of the total answer. And when you want to patent this for the ability to make a good successful moat, I need the other two thirds as well. And in that sense, that’s probably the one thing I personally do differently than practically everybody I’ve come across. I create almost the patent strategy in the invention portion. I even get to a point where these are the kind of the focal areas you would want maybe the claims to be.
I don’t want to write claims. I’m not an expert in that area, but this seems to be the unique piece. And what I see then is okay now let’s make sure I fully enable and give you your multiple options so that you can really articulate as the patent professional this is that part of that claim that is going to be a big deal …
and in the most recent version of like my new version of this now that I’m the customer and the inventor we went through and we created all of the claims for all of the embodiment up front. We actually ended up filing a patent that had I think 17 different independent sets with multiple dependents on each of them. And then what we did is then we revised it and only had them review the beginning one. So what I did is create the entire strategy and the entire continuation strategy but then only work in the patent office on the very first one while still maintaining the protection for all of them.
Now this is inside baseball to some degree. What he is talking about is how a company has an engineer, and they incentive them to file patents—pay them patent filing bonuses, and so on. (The “Productivity” of Patent Brainstorming.) To build up the corporation’s patent warchest: this his value on Wall Street, or with potential acquirers, or it can be used defensively, to ward off patent lawsuits, or as a revenue source by offensively and aggressively “asserting” the patent–in essence, extorting others and becoming a sort of patent troll (e.g. IBM makes a lot by “licensing” its patents).
The very existence of the patent system distorts where R&D dollars flow; they tend to flow more into patentable areas than pure research, math, physics, etc., the outcome of which is less patentable. And as can be seen here, it distorts the innovations produced since, as this guy notes, he has in mind the types of patents he can get–the type of “moat” he can build (sometimes also called a picket fence)—so he comes up with other embodiments to claim more than necessary, so as to make the patent more offensive, dangerous, broader, more valuable, more of an offensive extortion threat, and so on. His mistake is in thinking he is unique; he’s not special. This is how patent lawyers and businessmen and salesmen and engineers think, whether they are more or less conscious of it or not.
But basically this is an example of how invention strategies are influenced, distorted, skewed by the patent process. Consider what he is saying: if there were no patent system, he would just invent what he needs to for a given problem, and would not waste time trying to package the idea with as many related extensions to maximize his patent extortion threat.
See Murray N. Rothbard, Man, Economy, and State, scholar’s ed’n (Auburn: Mises Institute, 2004) , ch. 10, sec. 7: “It is by no means self-evident that patents encourage an increased absolute quantity of research expenditures. But certainly patents distort the type of research expenditure being conducted. . . . Research expenditures are therefore overstimulated in the early stages before anyone has a patent, and they are unduly restricted in the period after the patent is received. In addition, some inventions are considered patentable, while others are not. The patent system then has the further effect of artificially stimulating research expenditures in the patentable areas, while artificially restricting research in the nonpatentable areas.” See also Arnold Plant, “The Economic Theory Concerning Patents for Inventions,” in Selected Economic Essays and Addresses (London: Routledge & Kegan Paul, 1974), p. 43 (originally published in Economica, New Series, vol. 1, no. 1, Feb., 1934, 30-51). [↩]
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 graphic that shows how the U.S. patent system has shaped American history and innovation. The graphic contains a number of elements, including a timeline of key patents and significant events in American history, a comparison of domestic and foreign patents issued between 1790 and 2009, and charts showing the top countries and states in which U.S. patents originated, the number of pending applications between 1981 and 2009 and average application pendency between 1983 and 2008, fee diversion between 1992 and 2004, and rapid growth of the Chinese patent system between 1999 and 2008.
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 significant in the chem and pharma industry, from a certain point of view. I know of a number of people who have said that regulation and legal issues from FDA/EPA/etc. basically rot away at the profits of the industry, and it’s very hard for the non-mega-corps to expect return without “IP protection”. If the former statement is true to a significant enough extent, then you could see why people would accept the latter as the current state of things and a kind of “necessary evil.”
Again, it’s from a certain point of view, and there is an economic argument against IP anyway, but without some serious reflection you wouldn’t see it.
As I wrote in reply, this is just an example of a more general phenonemon: the state kneecaps you then offers you a wheelchair. For example they force unemployment on blacks then they take jobs with the military, or welfare. Here, the state (via the FDA) imposes costs, and the state (via the patent system) gives advantages to some companies (at the expense of competitors and consumers). The patent system itself, though it benefits some oligopolistic companies, imposes immense costs on the economy, as does the FDA and related laws like antitrust. So the patent-FDA-antitrust regulatory complex simply harms people and the economy, and is yet another instance of how the state can only destroy, not create wealth.
The Center for the Study of Innovative Freedom (C4SIF) is dedicated to building public awareness of the manner in which so-called “intellectual property” (IP) laws and policies impede innovation, creativity, communication, learning, knowledge, emulation, and information sharing. We are for property rights, free markets, competition, commerce, cooperation, and the voluntary sharing of knowledge, and oppose IP laws, which systematically impede or hamper innovation. IP law should be completely and immediately abolished.
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