Google has by now put 8 million US patents and 3 million patent applications on line link here. In addition to describing what it is doing, it sets out its objective in doing so thusly:

"As part of Google's mission to organize the world's information and make it universally accessible and useful, we're constantly working to expand the diversity of content we make available to our users. With Google Patents, you can now search the full text of the U.S. patent corpus and find patents that interest you."

Google has had its own issues with patents. Like much of the rest of the software industry, it avoided filing for them for some years, but competitive patenting has taken over the industry in the drive to gain a monopolistic advantage or prevent others from doing so by establishing a patent pool to force cross licensing. By making it easier to challenge applications and even granted patents, putting them on line should make bad patents rarer. The problem of identifying and proving prior art remains.

The New York Times has picked up on the recent proposal by the Administration to modify copyright law by invoking a new international agreement (ACTA) which would give US copyright protection previously given copyright protection under foreign law link here. These were in the U S public domain in the past but now they would be recognized as copyrighted. The Times opposes this.

The operative paragraphs read:

"As the petitioners said in their brief , "no treaty can authorize the government to do what the Constitution otherwise prohibits." Chief Justice John Roberts Jr. put it this way during argument: "One day I can perform Shostakovich; Congress does something, the next day I can't. Doesn't that present a serious First Amendment problem?"

"Copyright gives writers and others the incentive to create by giving them exclusive right to their work. But Congress's power to grant copyright is limited in time and scope so that works can move into the public domain, where they become an essential part of our culture. The government must find other ways to comply with the trade treaty without curbing free expression."

Copyright sanity is finally getting some well warranted coverage and rational support from responsible journals.

Matt Yglesias has a nice blog piece on the cost of extending copyrights, adding a wrinkle of his own link here.

He writes in response to PETER DECHENEY's piece which provides details on US trade agreements and legislation that extend copyright to foreign copyrighted works that had not previously been covered as they were in the public domain and the period of copyright by another 20 years link here. Yglesias point was a simple one: that so much of what is produced in the arts is derivative (i.e., it has a hard time being anything else), covering more and more works with copyright greatly complicates and raises the cost of producing new works you have to get "rights" or permission at cost in both time and money.

Validation for his point can be found in the many works that have not been produced like plays as the cost of getting the rights proved impossible to cover.

A day later, Robert Barnes goes into the same subject link here. And with lots of examples of the rise in the cost of producing or performing such derivative works. "Orchestras used to be able [to buy the score to] the Prokofiev symphony for $100, he said, and play it until the sheet music was worn out. Now it must be rented, at a cost of several hundred dollars for each performance.

Thus, copyright meant to encourage innovation does exactly the opposite.

Via Ed Lopez (somewhat tardily, sorry, Ed): Botas Picudas Mexicanas y Tribal

This Friday, Sept. 23, at 6pm Easter time, I'll be teaching a Mises Academy Webinar discussing the America Invents Act, signed into law last Friday by President Obama. I discuss this webinar in a Mises Daily article today: Obama's Patent Reform: Improvement or Continuing Calamity?.

In the webinar, I will:

1. summarize the basic problem with patent law from a free-market perspective;
2. present a series of real patent reforms that could make significant improvement in patent law (short of abolition);
3. explain and critique the relevant changes made by the America Invents Act;
4. briefly summarize other imminent IP legislation and treaties on the horizon; and
5. respond to questions from attendees.

As both proponents and opponents of patent law recognize, these issues are of crucial importance for innovation and our economy. If you are interested in learning about the current direction of patent policy, you may find this class of interest.

The blogosphere is rightfully abuzz over the recent paper by Bessen, Meurer and Ford. They are extremely careful researchers. They focus on litigation over software patents and measure losses to the victims of patent lawsuits and gains to the trolls who bring them by looking at changes in stock market valuations. They find the net loss to the economy from these lawsuits running at about $80 billion per year. They conclude

that the loss of billions of dollars of wealth associated with these lawsuits harms society. While the lawsuits increase incentives to acquire vague, over-reaching patents, they decrease incentives for real innovation overall

Patents: your government discouraging innovation.

Dean Baker takes issue with a Washington Post story link here on doctors shilling for drugs and drug companies paying them big money to push greater use of their drug including for uses prohibited by FDA link here.

The Post article is a routine description ("fair and balanced" as the big papers like to claim) leading to the fact that the doctors are well-paid for what amounts to treating patients while never seeing them. In some cases they push uses that are criminal, as when they recommend or prescribe a drug for unapproved use.

Baker's problem with the Post piece is its failure to recognize the central role of drug patents in this business. Without the patent, the drugcos couldn't charge the prices that make the big marketing payoffs and their huge profits possible.

Baker fails to note that this might just have something to do with the high cost of health care in the US (highest in the world) or the funding to pay campaign funds to crucial legislators to leave the system unfixed.