Keegan Hamilton has a must-read article on the front cover of this week's L.A. Weekly (the largest alternative newspaper in the Southern California area).

There is nothing in it that regular followers to this site don't already know in its broad strokes, but its still well worth the time to read and get your blood boiling over how extortion artists have taken over the legal system in the IP wars.

The opening paragraphs:

The bad news arrived in John Doe 2,057's mailbox in May. His wife unsealed a thick envelope from Comcast and read a carefully worded message explaining that a company called Imperial Enterprises, Inc. had filed a lawsuit against him in Washington, D.C., federal court. He stood accused of having illegally downloaded a copyrighted film five months earlier, at precisely 6:03 a.m. on the morning of January 27. The name of the Imperial Enterprises movie he purportedly purloined wasn't mentioned until four pages later. Though printed in tiny italic font in a court filing, it practically leapt off the page: Tokyo Cougar Creampies.

Yet when Mrs. Doe set eyes on that ignominious title, she couldn't help but crack a smile at the absurdity of the situation. Her husband is legally blind, with vision roughly 1/100th of that of a person with normal sight. He is physically incapable of watching any film, this particular porno included.

Read the full thing here:

http://www.seattleweekly.com/2011-08-10/news/porn-piracy-bittorrent/

Tim Berners-Lee came up twenty years ago with HTML, and thus the web was born. None of the technology or the standards have been patented, and see where it has brought us. Of course, the Internet could have had the same impact if HTML, HTTP and WWW had been patented, but that is highly unlikely.

For some ideas of how a patented web would have looked like, see this discussion on techdirt. This blog would certainly not have existed, and I can vouch my career would have been very different.

Brian Kahin Senior Fellow of the Computer and Communications Industry Association (members of the lobbying organization include Microsoft and Google, but apparently not Apple) gets it. Best quote? Noting that governments now own patents they themselves issue:

Markets for government granted rights to stop commerce -- in which governments themselves are major players, using government-granted rights to stop others from using government-granted rights to stop commerce...

Via Eugene Volokh, a small excerpt from a judge's decision which seems to "get it" when it comes to copyright extortion:

Mattel asserted a copyright claim that was stunning in scope and unreasonable in the relief it requested. The claim imperiled free expression, competition, and the only serious competitor Mattel had faced in the fashion doll market in nearly 50 years. MGA's successful defense ensured that well-resourced plaintiffs cannot bend the law to suit their pecuniary interests. For these reasons, and pursuant to 17 U.S.C. § 505, the Court awards MGA $105,688,073.00 in attorneys' fees and $31,677,104.00 in costs.

Judge Carter's specific reasoning makes one want to jump for joy! -

Fee awards to copyright defendants serve a purpose loftier than mere compensation: rewarding a successful defense that "enrich[es] the general public through access to creative works." Fogerty, 510 U.S. at 527. The rationales that underlie copyright favor limitation. Defendants play an important role in "demacrat[ing]" [sic] the "boundaries of copyright law" by raising defenses predicated upon public access to creative works and the novel expression of ideas...

Read the full Mattel v. MGA decision here:

http://cdn.volokh.com/wp/wp-content/uploads/2011/08/MattelvMGAFees.pdf

Mattel has had a notorious history of IP abuse:

http://www.out-law.com/page-4681

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mattel_v._MCA_Records

Their legal affairs department could definitely use some re-education. Meanwhile, they payback is enjoyable in this instance.

Via Andrew Sullivan -

Ideologically diverse commentators are in agreement that today's patent system harms both innovation and competition.

The Economist headlines 'Patents Against Prosperity'.

Kevin Drum at Mother Jones rails against patent overreach as well.

Congress is still bought and paid for by the patent industry - but could we at least be witnessing a grass roots convergence against patent overreach from both sides of the political spectrum? If we could at least get a consensus to explicitly ban software and business method patents, that would be a start on desperately needed reforms.

I think what we are seeing here is a potential start of the start...which in and of itself is a start.

Leave it to the Federal Circuit to do all it can to keep expanding patentable subject matters to their broadest possible reaches.


Patently-O blog has a useful summary of the decision here:

http://www.patentlyo.com/patent/2011/07/federal-circuit-isolated-human-dna-molecules-are-patentable.html

The lengthy court decision can be found here:

http://www.cafc.uscourts.gov/images/stories/opinions-orders/10-1406.pdf

[Updated note: I would particularly recommend that you Judge Bryson's persuasive dissent in the opinion, starting at pg. 87 in the PDF document.]

Timothy B. Lee at Forbes doesn't pull any punches: 'The Supreme Court Should Invalidate Software Patents'

Plaintiffs' Attorney Max Kennerly: 'Patents are granted too easily and then patent infringement suits are too expensive to defend.'

The notion that patent trolls, made possible by the institution of patents, are a very serious impediment to innovation is slowly making its way in public opinion. A nice and recent example is a nice piece by NPR, the national public broadcaster in the US: When patents attack. The link includes an MP3 of the episode.

Hat tip: orgtheory.net.

The excellent and insighful piece from This American Life which John Bennett pointed to on this site earlier is getting a lot of (mainly positive) reaction from several heavy hitters throughout the web.

Masnick at Techdirt: http://www.techdirt.com/articles/20110724/22250715225/when-patents-attack-how-patents-are-destroying-innovation-silicon-valley.shtml

Felix Salmon: http://blogs.reuters.com/felix-salmon/2011/07/25/the-cost-of-patent-trolls/

Matthew Yglesias at ThinkProgress: http://thinkprogress.org/yglesias/2011/07/25/277901/this-american-life-on-patent-trolls/

Andrew Sullivan: http://andrewsullivan.thedailybeast.com/2011/07/shaking-down-innovation.html

They command the eyeballs of a lot of influential people. But you can still color me cynical that any rational leadership will come out of Washington on this issue.

From Victor Zatsepsin in Russia:

Perhaps it would be interesting to know for you, that there is an initiative outspoken by Russian president Dmitry Medvedev recently, according to which Russia offers to create a worldwide internet database of intellectual property. The main principles of this undertaking remain unknown, but according to the Vedomosti article, this archive will provide ability to tag content as available for free, on royalty base or differently. Here's more of his vague statements:

Medvedev to make internet copyright proposals 'soon'

I believe that the Russia's case could be enlightening in many ways, since in fact there is no strong royalty-based economy, for instance, in books' or film industry.

He seems to want to water down copyright in the rest of the world in exchange for strengthening it in Russia. I am doubtful that the copyright monopolists are going to have anything of it.