via Melody Walker: a nice article in Business Week about law professor John Duffy. He seems to be of two minds about patents: he wants everything to be patentable but better standards of non-obviousness. I'd agree with the latter.

By Alistair Kelman...

Once upon a time, there was a little red hen who scratched about the barnyard until she uncovered some willow bark. She chewed on this and found that it could reduce her arthritic pain. "Ah"she said "There is a compound in this willow bark which could be helpful in eliminating pain. Who will help me extract the compound and turn it into pain killing tablets?"

for the rest here and follow the link.

This is partially a bleg: does anyone know what the Google book settlement means? It is asserted that Google gets preferential treatment. So my questions:

1. Could I file a class action lawsuit against Yahoo claiming to represent copyright holders and settle with them for a nominal sum - promising them all existing copyrights in exchange for 0.0001% of their revenues? It seems as though it would be difficult for holders of orphan copyrights to opt out of the settlement?

2. Can the Author's Guild and the team of lawyers that ripped off Google on behalf of a bunch of copyright holders who will never see a penny of the settlement money legally offer a less generous arrangement to Yahoo?

3. Why on earth do we allow class action lawsuits anyway, given that the only beneficiaries are the lawyers that file them?

I hate that I have to write about stuff like this - because it means something bad is happening. Via Alistair Kelman an article about the pending patent fight between Apple and Palm. The basic idea is that Apple claims to have patented the multi-touch interface - although as the article makes clear it hasn't done quite that. The key point is - this has nothing to do with innovation. Apple came up with an innovative interface - and it would have done so even if it couldn't have patented it. It earned a lot of money and an enormous first mover advantage from its innovation. This is about trying to retain monopoly power in a market it created, and does not serve to promote innovation - quite the opposite, Apple is clearly trying and to some extent succeeding in preventing innovation.

From a reader who is a Library and Information Science graduate student, currently working at several libraries:

I did not see any mention of Creative Commons (http://creativecommons.org/) and would be very interested in hearing your thoughts on it..

I think we are all very supportive of the Creative Commons movement. It is unfortunate in a sense that it has to exist. The fact that the default is for works to be under copyright is one of the worst changes to the law in recent memory. It would be far better if copyright existed only for those that actually wished to claim it. Creative commons does an enormous service by at least providing a simple and clear way of renouncing parts of copyrights. I use it extensively for my own work. Far better of course just to get rid of copyright.

I think Open Access Journals, Institutional Repositories and Creative Commons Licensing are as innovative as the Open Source movement for software, challenging the current system and opening doors for creation and competition.. Again these topics were not covered in the book and I would be really interested in learning about your opinions on these movements. (Any chance for a second edition?)

Don't know about a second edition...the first hasn't been out that long. Professional journals are a scandal that we've discussed occasionally on this blog. The issue has somewhat limited connection to copyright - more to do with the fact that commercial publishers own the reputations of scientific journals. I'll be posting more on open source publishing shortly.

Also I'd be interested in your take on the somewhat recent events of - the HR-801 Fair Copyright Act and the AM/FM Radio Royalty Bill.

HR-801 Fair Copyright Act is a bill pushed by commercial publishers to undo NIH policy that forces scientific work paid for by government grants to be open access after a period of time. The idea that the government pays for research that is then put under lock and key is both offensive and from a policy point of view stupid.

The AM/FM Radio Royalty Bill seeks to force radio stations to pay royalties to copyright owners. Was there something here broken that needed to be fixed? This is the central reason that I oppose intellectual monopoly in all of its forms. Once you have it, there is constant lobbying to grab more and more, regardless of whether it fulfils the purpose of promoting science and the useful arts.

(via Slashdot) Fed up with the new German censorship law a member of the German Parliament resigned from the Social Democratic Party and joined the pirate party.

Two recent studies about copyright, differing wildly in their conclusions and in the quality of their analysis. On the high quality side (via Slashdot) an article by Felix Oberholzer-Gee and Koleman Strumpf analyzing the impact of file sharing on the music industry. While this confirms what we thought informally, it is the first study I've seen with hard numbers: musicians income up due to increased demand for their live performances; the total production of songs way up, even as the recorded sales have dropped. Basically - the internet balancing distribution cost and business model against the reduction in demand for recordings has helped musicians and increased the output of music. A really careful detailed analysis.

On the negative side - I'm really sorry to see my former employer the RAND corporation sink to this - a study entitled "Film Piracy, Organized Crime, and Terrorism". As it turns out the authors are highly confused between film piracy and counterfeiting...well perhaps just highly confused. Maybe we should send the authors out to see Be Kind Rewind - that I suppose would qualify as movie counterfeiting.

Alistair Kelman is the man who can't exist: he's a forensic computing expert witness and barrister. I guess he and Stephan prove lawyers aren't all bad. Of course the reason for posting is that he has a review of Against Monopoly. But aside from the fact he seems to like the book, like all well done reviews, it doesn't just rehash what we did, but contains value added.

As we know... politicians don't use computers. (via Robert Levine)