Economic Analysis and Policy, an open access journal from Australia, just published a special issue on the Economics of open access publishing, guest-edited by yours truly. Articles discuss the publishing industry, the experience of editors and the outlook for open access. In particular, they demonstrate that it is a myth that online publishing is an expensive undertaking. Most of the current cost of journals are either tied to the paper they are printed on or to implement gateways to charge for subscriptions. Remove the two, and costs are severely reduced, and readership increases.

For more, view this issue by clicking on the journal link above or go to the list of contents on the RePEc blog.

We have seen, here or elsewhere, trademark suits that were silly, but this one takes the cake. Compare the two following logos:

Re/Max argues, according to this article that the rehava logo is too similar to its own. You may wonder how. Here is a quote from the Re/Max lawyer: First of all, both names start with "r" and have logos with accent lines near the letter "e". It goes beyond that. If you chop the top off of the 'h,' you (almost) have the 'm' in Re/Max. The next letter is an 'a,' and if you take the 'v' then you have half of an 'x'. I am not making this up... Nobody in their right mind would believe this, but apparently some lawyers believe they have a case. Or they found a small company to bully. In any case, it shows how trademark law is ill-conceived.

The two books motivating this blog are available for free online and can be bought in hard copy. Apparently, they are selling well, which proves that one can make money from providing free books. Following this model (possibly independently developed, we do not know as this model was not patented), Flat World Knowledge is now starting to offer textbooks. Print copies are less expensive than the "traditional" outlets, and pdfs can be downloaded for free.

The catalog is small so far and concentrated on Economics and Business, but there are some good names. I find it quite interesting that Business books are listed, as I found faculty in business schools generally very skeptical that one can provide a good service at no cost.

As reported by Newsweek, a much more efficient way to produce artemisinin, which has a 90% cure rate for malaria, has been found by Berkeley chemical engineer Jay Keasling. Interestingly, he has no intention to get rich from it and has also made sure no one else will. The new drug will be marketed in 2010 at cost. Note, though, that he still patented his discovery. A better commitment would have been to let anyone use it.

There are currently large efforts to make malaria prevention and treatment affordable, but unfortunately this is not quite sufficient, as my research with Doug Gollin shows. A larger problem is that prevention is not efficient enough, so that even at minimal costs you still have substantial malarial prevalence and large impacts on economies. Cost reductions like the one Keasling is generating will have an impact on the economic consequences of the disease, but unfortunately not its spread. It may in fact increase it, as people will find it less useful to protect themselves.

Peter Suber's Open Access News draws an interesting parallel between copyright laws and the World Trade Organization. The General Public License is a way to "hack" copyright laws so as to put the licensed items out of reach of copyrights. In a similar way, the General Agreement of Trade and Services, which tries to regulate the trade of services and thus expand the reach of copyright and patent laws, could be hacked to specifically put some services out of reach of such laws. The GATS lays out rules within groups of countries to commit them to agreements. The same rules could be applied to free some services from intellectual property and define rules to enforce this. Public goods, which suffer the most from patents and copyrights, are obvious candidates for such agreements.

Slate reports on a lawsuit that is an obvious harassment of a small company by a law firm using trademark as a pretext. In short, the suit argues, to take this post as an example, that I should not link to the Slate article like above but rather like this: Slate (http://www.slate.com/id/2210636/pagenum/all/, where the full article can be read).

Yes, you read it right, the suit argues that hyperlinking the way everyone does infringes some trademark, as it supposedly confuses readers. In my case, you are supposed to be confused into thinking that Slate would be part of Against Monopoly. The judge, who may not have heard about the web, did not dismiss this suit, forcing the poor accused party to settle before legal cost would escalate.

The Swiss newspaper TagesAnzeiger has an interview of Eric Garland on the digital music market (in German and broken Babelfish English). Essentially, he says that a whole generation of customers has been lost for the music industry through "piracy" and that the music industry should accept this instead of fighting it. One way to do so is to massively lower the price of music. At $1 a song, people hesitate to buy and look for alternatives. At $0.10, they would buy without hesitation and much more frequently. Piracy is then not worth it anymore.

This reminds me of the comparison between the early US and British book industries in Michele and David's book. Flood the market with cheap goods, then no one can offer a lower price and you still make more profit than by enforcing copyright. And you improve public welfare, too.

Through Open Access News, we learn that offense is the best defense against bogus patents. Indeed, it appears people seem to be patenting traditional Indian medicine, inducing India to incur large costs for challenging these patents. By making a database of traditional medicine available to patent offices, this should not be possible anymore as prior art is easier to establish.

As reported by Gizmodo (via Mashable), Monty Python has multiplied by 230 its Amazon sales after uploading high quality videos extracted from its DVDs to its YouTube channel. Another example of making material freely available increasing sales.

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.