The big news this week is the introduction of Microsoft's Bing, a search program that is competitive with Google's and the announcement that Google will produce Chrome, a free open source operating system which will be up against Microsoft Windows. Those innovations change the long stagnant competitive landscape for two of the overwhelmingly dominant software packages link here, here, and here.

Some of this may turn out to be vapor ware in that replacing established software with new is widely resisted. Even when the advantages are obvious, there are costs in having to learn new programs. Thus, aside from the experimental user, getting the new adopted is a long process.

But for both Google and Microsoft, the game has changed. It will be interesting to see how Google improves its search program and how Microsoft prices the latest operating system, Windows 7, when it actually goes on sale in the coming months, facing a major competitor in the wings that will be free.

Who wins? The consumer.

Christian Engström, the Pirate Party's member of the European parliament, has penned a great op-ed in the Financial Times on the need for IP reform in the digital age.

A sample taste:

Whenever there are ways of communicating in private, they will be used to share copyrighted material. If you want to stop people doing this, you must remove the right to communicate in private. There is no other option. Society has to make a choice.

The world is at a crossroads. The internet and new information technologies are so powerful that no matter what we do, society will change. But the direction has not been decided.

The article got linked to on the Drudge Report under the appropriately worded headline: "Copyright laws threaten online freedom; Governments restrict right to communicate..."

Read the whole thing HERE.

Mathew Yglesias has an interesting post on Chris Anderson's book "Free" which inspired some comments that are worth taking a look at.

Read it all HERE.

As mentioned by Jeff Tucker, in the Pope's new encyclical, Caritas in veritate, he writes:

On the part of rich countries there is excessive zeal for protecting knowledge through an unduly rigid assertion of the right to intellectual property, especially in the field of health care.

As Jeff writes, "I wish it had gone further to reject the whole idea of a IP but this is an excellent statement as far as it goes."

The damage done by intellectual property goes well beyond the prevention of the downloading of music. Yesterday's story about a Goldman Sachs employee downloading proprietary information was not exactly an example of a violation of intellectual property laws, but rather a theft of trade secrets -- perhaps a distinction without a difference.

Below, is a story about Toyota, supposedly benign force in the green economy by virtue of the Prius. Here is another side of the story in which Toyota is using intellectual property to make competition difficult.

One might be sympathetic to Toyota you were selling socks or toothpaste, but global warming seems to be too important to be gamed by such shenanigans.

Murphy, John. 2009. "Toyota Builds Thicket of Patents Around Hybrid To Block Competitors." Wall Street Journal (1 July): p. B 1.

"The Obama administration's tough new fuel-efficiency standards could pose problems for some car makers, but Toyota Motor Corp. is hoping to benefit. The Japanese company is betting the rules will give an advantage to its expanding lineup of hybrid vehicles, and it also aims to boost revenue by licensing to other car makers the patents that protect its fuel-saving technologies. Since it started developing the gas-electric Prius more than a decade ago, Toyota has kept its attorneys just as busy as its engineers, meticulously filing for patents on more than 2,000 systems and components for its best-selling hybrid. Its third-generation Prius, which hit showrooms in May, accounts for about half of those patents alone. Toyota's goal: to make it difficult for other auto makers to develop their own hybrids without seeking licensing from Toyota."

Stephen Mihm writes an illuminating review of a book called The Industrial Revolutionaries; the Making of the Modern World by Gavin Weightman link here. He quotes the book, "Abraham Gesner, a country-doctor-turned-geologist in Nova Scotia was the first person to figure out how to transform the raw sludge of fossil remains into kerosene and other fuels. He effectively laid the foundation for the modern petroleum industry but steadfastly refused to take full credit for his discoveries, writing in 1861 that 'the progress of discovery in this case, as in others, has been slow and gradual. It has been carried on by the labors, not of one mind, but of many, so as to render it difficult to discover to whom the greatest credit is due.'"

Weightman's book seems to be a riff on that point, writing a history of industrial innovation around the world in the 19th Century. He fails, however, to draw the conclusion that we here would: that no single innovation stands alone or justifies patents which actually end up impeding innovation rather than their constitutionally mandated justification, promoting it.

Google is in the news again. The government has now informed the court reviewing the settlement with publishers and other copyright owners that it is formally investigating whether the terms violate the antitrust act. A court hearing on the settlement is set for Oct. 7, at which the Justice Department can present "its views orally at that time."

The New York Times says, "The settlement would give Google the right to display the books online, and to profit from them by selling access to individual titles and by selling subscriptions to its entire collection to libraries and other institutions. Revenue would be shared among Google, authors and publishers."

The agreement is a good bit more complex than that. Google has established a website for the first time reader link here and another with all the questions you would ever want to ask and explaining what it is doing and how that will change in the future here. Separately, just the portion of interest to copyright holders, 40 pages long but now one page, entitled "If You Are A Book Author, Book Publisher Or Other Person Who Owns A Copyright In Books Or Other Writings," is link here. Finally, the whole agreement and the 16 PDF's attached, is here.

The Electronic Frontier Foundation gives a good short analysis of the issues as it sees them link here. Google Search itself lists more than 12 million websites. Anybody expect a quick outcome?

(via Ricardo Lagos) The story of Prada is an interesting one. The company is owned by Miuccia Prada who is also the chief designer. In 1978 when Prada was a relatively small designer label, in good Southern Italian fashion, another company started making knock-offs of Prada bag designs. At a trade fair Miuccia Prada bumped into the owner of the copycat firm and "harangued him ... for allegedly copying some of her bag designs." So: big expensive lawsuit against her rival Patrizio Bertelli? Apparently not. The two got married and combined her design sense with his manufacturing ability and made Prada into the multi-billion business it is today. If IP lawsuits are a form of business warfare, I suppose the moral of the story is "Make love not war."

Study Finds Patent Systems May Not Be an Effective Incentive to Encourage Invention of New Technologies reports:

A new study published in The Columbia Science and Technology Law Review challenges the traditional view that patents foster innovation, suggesting instead that patents may harm new technology, economic activity, and societal wealth. These results may have important policy implications because many countries count on patent systems to spur new technology and promote economic growth.

The study is: Patents and the Regress of Useful Arts, by Dr. Andrew W. Torrance & Dr. Bill Tomlinson, Colum. Sci. & Tech. L. Rev. 10 (2009): 130 (Published May 15, 2009).

As those familiar with my libertarian and IP views know, I'm not a utilitarian (see my There's No Such Thing As A Free Patent; Against Intellectual Property); but almost all IP proponents are, and claim that IP is "worth it" because it generates additional innovation the value of which is implicitly presumed to be obviously much greater than the relatively trivial cost of having an IP system. So it is striking that there seems to be no empirical studies or analyses providing conclusive evidence that an IP system is indeed worth the cost. Every study I have ever seen is either neutral or ambivalent, or ends up condemning part or all of IP systems. Utilitarian IP advocates remind of the welfarist liberals skewered by Thomas Sowell in his The Vision of the Anointed: Self-Congratulation as a Basis for Social Policy--liberals continue to advocate policies long after there is overwhelming evidence these policies do not work, even by the naive, socialistic standards of their proponents; likewise, utilitarians keep repeating the mantra that we need patent and copyright to stimulate innovation and creativity, even though every study continues to find the opposite.