Sorry, we have been deficient in updating our blogroll. The Von Mises institute is a libertarian think tank in east Alabama. They do research and publishing - check out Stephan's book Against Intellectual Property - only six bucks. The also have a blog Mises Blog on libertarian issues, including IP. Plus they are doing a special on Michele's and my book - probably later this week.

The Association of Government Accountants (formerly the "Federal Government Accountants Association") has awarded the US Patent and Trademark Office its "Fiscal Year 2007 Performance and Accountability Report Award" (which looks oddly similar to the USPTO's own "red ribbon" patent grant) one of 17 federal agencies to get this award that year.

Not only does the USPTO prepare "a well structured, logically organized and easy-to-navigate report" it's very "productive" too. As it boasts on its website,

Highlights of USPTO accomplishments for the past year include ... Increased patent production by an additional 14 percent over 2007 by examining 448,003 applications the highest number in our history. Production has increased by 38.6 percent over the past four years, compared to a 21.3 percent increase in application filings during the same period.

It's sobering to think how much worse off the US would be in this recession without all this productivity.

For some more interesting patent statistics, see the World Patent Report: A Statistical Review (2008) for example, as of about 2006, there were about two million patent applications filed per years worldwide; about 750,000 patents issued (granted) every year; and about 6.1 million patents in force around the world.

(cross-posted at Mises.org)

Interest post on Squawking Tech--proposes that because of natural (price) deflation,

"With the exception of land and human time, in all areas of society we have been conditioned to expect more for less over time. Yet until just a few years ago, the music industry was increasingly charging more, for the same product. And they were able to do this because copyright law gives them the ability to set prices like a legal monopoly. ... When people in aggregate are asked to pay far more than what they think something should cost, they start looking for alternatives. In this case, the alternative comes in the form of P2P technology."

Intriguing argument: that the failure of music to fall in price along with other technology-related goods is evidence of the pernicious effect of copyright.

Obama picks RIAA's favorite lawyer for a top Justice post. As had already been pointed out

Campaign rhetoric aside, this should be no surprise. Obama's selection of Joe Biden as vice president showed that the presidential hopeful was comfortable with someone with firmly pro-RIAA views. Biden urged the criminal prosecutions of copyright-infringing peer-to-peer users and tried to create a new federal felony involving playing unauthorized music.

Michael Perelman reported before on Google's deal with authors and publishers link here. MOTOKO RICH gives some more detail on the deal link here which still has to be approved by the court. Here are some of the major points from the article.

"It will make it possible for users to read a far greater collection of books, including many still under copyright protection."

"According to Dan Clancy, the engineering director for Google book search, every month users view at least 10 pages of more than half of the one million out-of-copyright books that Google has scanned into its servers."

"For readers who might want to buy digital access to an individual scanned book, Mr. Clancy said, Google was likely to sell at least half of the books for $5.99 or less. Students and faculty at universities who subscribe to the database will be able to get the full contents of all the books free."

"The settlement may give new life to copyrighted out-of-print books in a digital form and allow writers to make money from titles that had been out of commercial circulation for years. Of the seven million books Google has scanned so far, about five million are in this category."

"Revenue will be generated through advertising sales on pages where previews of scanned books appear, through subscriptions by libraries and others to a database of all the scanned books in Google's collection, and through sales to consumers of digital access to copyrighted books. Google will take 37 percent of this revenue, leaving 63 percent for publishers and authors."

"Just what kind of commercial opportunity the settlement represents is unknown, but few expect it to generate significant profits for any individual author. Even Google does not necessarily expect the book program to contribute significantly to its bottom line."

Rich reports some criticisms of the settlement, but they seem small beer. That readers might decide to pass up a book based on a few pages of its text might just as likely be encouraged to read the whole thing. More telling was the concern of some libraries that the charges would price them out of the market for the service.

To me, the settlement seems like a good deal for most people, short of the abolition of copyright. Publishers are likely to suffer in the long run as the market for printed books continues to shrink.

I just came across the site of a German patent attorney who seems to collect on his website non-traditional trademarks (archive). A gold mine if you are looking to roll your eyes for hours on end. There are, for example, 84 pages worth of trademarked colors. Other crazy trademarks: the scent of lemon or freshly cut grass; the motion of forming a T with your hands (time-out); moving your fingers to imitate the cutting motion of scissors; giving a child your hand. Oh, how much I have sinned without knowing it.

Tom Cruise May Face Legal Action Over Hitler Globe reports that the collector who bought the famous "Hitler's globe" may sue for use of a likeness of the globe in Cruise's recent film Valkyrie, "the thriller about a real-life plot to assassinate Hitler." The article reports that in "2007, Pritikin paid $100,000 for the globe and had its likeness copyrighted to keep it from being used in propaganda by sick neo-Nazi groups." Whew, what a relief!

(Cross-posted at LewRockwell.com.)

Marcia Angell, a Senior Lecturer in Social Medicine at Harvard Medical School writes a review of three books that supports that judgment link here. E.g., when a doctor (a professor at Harvard Med School) is also on the payroll of a drug company, diagnoses a two-year old as bipolar, and is instrumental in the drug's widespread use among the very young, a drug produced by that company, it is hard to conclude anything else.

Four quotes from the review: "Because these psychiatrists were singled out by Senator Grassley, they received a great deal of attention in the press, but similar conflicts of interest pervade medicine. (The senator is now turning his attention to cardiologists.) Indeed, most doctors take money or gifts from drug companies in one way or another. Many are paid consultants, speakers at company-sponsored meetings, ghost-authors of papers written by drug companies or their agents, and ostensible "researchers" whose contribution often consists merely of putting their patients on a drug and transmitting some token information to the company. Still more doctors are recipients of free meals and other out-and-out gifts. In addition, drug companies subsidize most meetings of professional organizations and most of the continuing medical education needed by doctors to maintain their state licenses."

"Many drugs that are assumed to be effective are probably little better than placebos, but there is no way to know because negative results are hidden. One clue was provided six years ago by four researchers who, using the Freedom of Information Act, obtained FDA reviews of every placebo-controlled clinical trial submitted for initial approval of the six most widely used antidepressant drugs approved between 1987 and 1999 Prozac, Paxil, Zoloft, Celexa, Serzone, and Effexor. They found that on average, placebos were 80 percent as effective as the drugs. The difference between drug and placebo was so small that it was unlikely to be of any clinical significance. The results were much the same for all six drugs: all were equally ineffective. But because favorable results were published and unfavorable results buried (in this case, within the FDA), the public and the medical profession believed these drugs were potent antidepressants."

"Conflicts of interest affect more than research. They also directly shape the way medicine is practiced, through their influence on practice guidelines issued by professional and governmental bodies, and through their effects on FDA decisions. A few examples: in a survey of two hundred expert panels that issued practice guidelines, one third of the panel members acknowledged that they had some financial interest in the drugs they considered."

"In recent years, drug companies have perfected a new and highly effective method to expand their markets. Instead of promoting drugs to treat diseases, they have begun to promote diseases to fit their drugs. The strategy is to convince as many people as possible (along with their doctors, of course) that they have medical conditions that require long-term drug treatment."

The enormous profits based on drug patents have now corrupted the doctors as well. A new system, anyone?