sennoma's Feed

Intellectual backing for the CC paradigm shift - Creative Commons

sennoma — Thu, 24 Dec 2009 03:36:00 -0500

Our board member Hal Abelson points us to Modeling a Paradigm Shift: From Producer Innovation to User and Open Collaborative Innovation , an important new paper by Carliss Y. Baldwin and Eric von Hippel. If you’re interested in the theoretical case for the ascendancy of innovation and creativity in the commons — and for policy that does not cripple the commons — read, or at least skim these highly readable 29 pages. Tagged by sennoma under intellectualproperty, copyright, creativecommons,

Against Monopoly

sennoma — Thu, 24 Dec 2009 03:22:00 -0500

The "Compulsory Licensing" paper attacks this question directly - looking at an episode where the US "stole" a bunch of inventions by compulsory licensing after World War I. The consequent effect on innovation in the areas covered by the licenses? It went up by 20%. Tagged by sennoma under intellectualproperty, patents,

open...: A Modest Proposal: "How to Fix Capitalism"

sennoma — Fri, 27 Nov 2009 08:09:00 -0500

Tagged by sennoma under capitalism, socialism, intellectualproperty, patents, copyright,

SSRN-Real Copyright Reform by Jessica Litman

sennoma — Fri, 27 Nov 2009 06:20:00 -0500

Abstract: A copyright system is designed to produce an ecology that nurtures the creation, dissemination and enjoyment of works of authorship. When it works well, it encourages creators to generate new works, assists intermediaries in disseminating them widely, and supports readers, listeners and viewers in enjoying them. If the system poses difficult entry barriers to creators, imposes demanding impediments on intermediaries, or inflicts burdensome conditions and hurdles on readers, then the system fails to achieve at least some of its purposes. The current U.S. copyright statute is flawed in all three respects. In this article, I explore how the current copyright system is failing its intended beneficiaries. The foundation of copyright law’s legitimacy, I argue, derives from its evident benefits for creators and for readers. That foundation is badly cracked, in large part because of the perception that modern copyright law is not especially kind to either creators or to readers; instead, it concentrates power in the hands of the intermediaries who control the conduits between creators and their audience. Those intermediaries have recently used their influence and their copyright rights to obstruct one another’s exploitation of copyrighted works. I argue that the concentration of copyright rights in the hands of intermediaries made more economic sense in earlier eras than it does today. The key to real copyright reform, I suggest, is to reallocate copyright’s benefits to give more rights to creators, greater liberty to readers, and less control to copyright intermediaries. Tagged by sennoma under intellectualproperty, copyright,

Against Monopoly

sennoma — Mon, 05 Oct 2009 10:56:00 -0400

Examples of Outrageous Patents and Judgments Examples of (at least apparently) ridiculous patents and patent applications abound (more at PatentLawPractice): * Amazon's "one-click" patent, asserted against rival Barnes & Noble * Cendant's assertion that Amazon violated Cendant's patent monopoly on recommending books to customers (since settled) * The attempt of Dustin Stamper, Bush's Top Economist, to secure a patent regarding an application for a System And Method For Multi-State Tax Analysis, which claims "a method, comprising: creating one or more alternate entity structures based on a base entity structure, the base entity structure comprising one or more entities; determining a tax liability for each alternate entity structure and the base entity structure; and generating a result based on comparing each of the determined tax liabilities" * Apple's patent application for digital Karaoke * the suit against Facebook by the holder of a patent for a "system for creating a community for users with common interests to interact in" * the "absurdly broad patent [issued to Blackboard] for common uses of technology if that technology is employed in the context of education" (see also Patent Office Rejects Blackboard E-Learning Patent One Month After It Wins Lawsuit, Techdirt (Mar. 31, 2008) * Compton's (now Encyclopedia Britannica's) patent that "broadly cover[s] any multimedia database allowing users to simultaneously search for text, graphics, and sounds basic features found in virtually every multimedia product on the market" * Carfax's patent on a "method for perusing selected vehicles having a clean title history" * Acacia's patent for putting a unique transaction number on a receipt[26] * Pat. No. 6,368,227, covering swinging sideways on a swing Tagged by sennoma under intellectualproperty,

Fair Use Evaluator

sennoma — Sat, 25 Jul 2009 03:07:00 -0400

via: http://digital-scholarship.org/digitalkoans/2009/07/23/fair-use-evaluator-and-exceptions-for-instructors-etool-released/ Tagged by sennoma under copyright, scholarlycommunication, intellectualproperty, fairuse,

Scholarly Communications @ Duke » How fair use was born

sennoma — Fri, 17 Jul 2009 01:07:00 -0400

Tagged by sennoma under fairuse, intellectualproperty, copyright, kevinsmith,

Scholarly Communications @ Duke » Fair use, by comparision

sennoma — Fri, 17 Jul 2009 01:07:00 -0400

the flexibility that fair use offers versus the certainty offered by more specific exceptions for research and teaching found in the copyright laws of most other countries Tagged by sennoma under fairuse, intellectualproperty, copyright, kevinsmith,

Some Facts About Patents - patentapplications.net

sennoma — Wed, 15 Jul 2009 11:20:00 -0400

Tagged by sennoma under intellectualproperty, patents,

Intellectual Property Versus Real Property | Foundation for Economic Education

sennoma — Sat, 13 Jun 2009 02:06:00 -0400

Tagged by sennoma under intellectualproperty, sheldonrichman,

AUTM

sennoma — Thu, 04 Jun 2009 11:40:00 -0400

Includes summary data: how much research, how many patents, new products, etc. Tagged by sennoma under intellectualproperty, patents, techtransfer,

Extending the free software paradigm to DIY Biology

sennoma — Tue, 02 Jun 2009 07:47:00 -0400

Tagged by sennoma under garyrichmond, openlicensing, diybio, intellectualproperty,

Knowledge Ecology Notes » Prizes and Grants, Type I, II and III diseases, rich and poor countries, open and closed medicine development

sennoma — Tue, 12 May 2009 09:41:00 -0400

OPENNESS For all innovation efforts, there are quite important issues concerning openness, and the hazards of enclosures of science and the hoarding of knowledge. A number of academics writers, patent professionals and R&D experts have called attention to the potential risks that innovation inducement prizes might lead to less sharing of knowledge, as people position themselves to win prizes. But this risk should be seen in a broader context. It is also often pointed out that patents can discourage upstream research and downstream product development. Government grant programs that encourage the privatisation of publicly funded R&D (like the US Bayh-Dole Act) can also move things in the wrong direction. It turns out this whole important topic is complicated. One area to pay attention to are the “Bayh-Dole” issues relating to prizes. In many of the US government funded prizes, and in the early X-prize designs, all of the intellectual property rights go to the recipient of the prizes. In some non-medical cases in the US, the government is barred from asking for licenses to use the inventions that win the prizes — an even worse outcome than for patents developed under federal grants, which are subject to (rarely used [fn1]) royalty free government licenses, and march-in and access requirements. So one debate is about obtaining the right bundle of rights in patents or data from prize winners, and managing also the disclosures. After a series of workshops on medical innovation inducement prizes, proposals also emerged to include new “open source dividends,” which involve sharing of prize money to entities that openly share access to knowledge, materials and technology. The open source dividends were modeled in several of the 2008 Bolivia Barbados prize proposals, and have unfortunately been ignored by some of those who have commented on those proposals. There are also much more transformation proposals for funding open source medicine, including the proposals to introduce “competitive intermediaries” that have as t Tagged by sennoma under openscience, oa, prizes, innovation, patents, intellectualproperty,

The Fight of His Life

sennoma — Sat, 09 May 2009 04:18:00 -0400

Tagged by sennoma under intellectualproperty, opendata, assholes,

Economist Debates: Copyright and wrongs

sennoma — Tue, 05 May 2009 06:25:00 -0400

Motion: that existing copyright laws do more harm than good Tagged by sennoma under intellectualproperty, copyright,

Scholarly Communication News: Who Knew Discussing A Long Repealed Copyright Law Could Be So Interesting... | Techdirt

sennoma — Tue, 05 May 2009 12:55:00 -0400

Tagged by sennoma under intellectualproperty, copyright, publicdomain,

chem-bla-ics: Thesis and copyright transfer

sennoma — Mon, 04 May 2009 04:11:00 -0400

Tagged by sennoma under copyright, intellectualproperty, egonwillighagen,

Against Monopoly

sennoma — Wed, 29 Apr 2009 05:04:00 -0400

In EE Times: Opinion: Engineers should stage a patent strike, I noted an op-ed by Rick Merritt in EETimes, "Opinion: Engineers should stage a patent strike." A Mr. J. C. Cooper, of Pixel Instruments Corp., replied with a letter to the editor in defense of the patent system. My reply is reprinted below: Tagged by sennoma under intellectualproperty, openlicensing, patents,

miscellaneous factZ - The online home of Rufus Pollock » Blog Archive » Talk on Copyright Enforcement at JURI Working Group on Authors’ Rights

sennoma — Mon, 20 Apr 2009 06:05:00 -0400

Tagged by sennoma under intellectualproperty, rufuspollock, copyright,

InkSpot. Science. On Demand » Walled Gardens

sennoma — Thu, 02 Apr 2009 05:06:00 -0400

a recent report by Hefce (Higher Education Funding Council for England) which summarises the financial performance of English Universities, showed that a 22% increase in funding in IP protection (to over £20M) had led to a 1% increase in income. Note — income, not profit. Tagged by sennoma under intellectualproperty, open.everything, openscience,