TV network ABC's widely reported Obama-Clinton debate last week has produced some interesting IP related fallout link here. ABC tried to restrict outtakes by the other networks to no more than 30 seconds in order to protect its investment in the program from competitors. The restriction was widely ignored. Apparently, the other networks believe that "fair use" cannot be so narrowly defined.

Will ABC sue? Seems unlikely, but stay tuned.

China's patent regime (and I"P" system generally) is growing like a weed. Trademark applications there have increased 60% in five years. The number of patents issued has almost doubled to 850,000.

China has added 50 courts that handle I"P" cases. The lawyers are getting rich and, of course, are preventing non-Chinese firms from filing patents or representing clients in court. In fact, the lawyers are the main beneficiaries of the monopoly formerly known as intellectual property. Isn't monopoly great?

The Economist notes that under Mao private property was considered to be theft of the masses. However, it gets it wrong when it implies that the patent laws enacted in China starting in 1985 (and enforced starting in 2001) were consistent with private property.

Patents are a kind of theft of the masses. As Prodhoun should have said, "intellectual property is theft."

The site Make Textbooks Affordable has opened a petition already signed by 1000 faculty to declare "their preference for high-quality, affordable textbooks, including open textbooks, over expensive commercial textbooks." Well, that seems to be like an obvious preference, but I think the point here is to demonstrate that there is a demand for open textbooks, which should encourage some supply to form.

The fact is that there are already quite a few open textbooks. See the list on the site of the petitioners, or Textbook Revolution, or WikiBooks. Finally a list for Economics on IDEAS/RePEc.

This is a story that won't end here, but raises a lot of important issues for academia. As do many universities, Georgia State produces on-line study materials from published material, for use as course readings link here. It is now being sued by Cambridge University Press, Oxford University Press and Sage Publications for copyright infringement. The complaint, violating publishers rights, is based on the extent of the copying because it goes way beyond fair use. I would expect Georgia State to lose the case under current copyright law since it had not obtained permission or paid for a license.

In the absence of changing the law, the only way around this is to get authors to make the texts available on line, perhaps for limited uses, as our own David Levine has done and allow commercial publication with this understanding. As we have written before, academic authors need to be urged to adopt such an arrangement, perhaps using a little friendly collegial pressure. That will still leave a lot of published material that would be useful for courses but could not be used without permission. Would a change in copyright be feasible that made such use an exception? That seems unlikely, but worth thinking about.

Kurt Denke is my new hero. He's the former lawyer who is President of Blue Jeans Cable, a competitor of Monster Cable. When he received a cease and desist letter from Monster, who alleged some of Blue Jeans' "Tartan" cable products were too similar to Monster's, Denke sent back a devastating and heroic reply. This is one of the best letters I've ever read. It's heroic and ballsy, and strategically brilliant. Further, I think this letter can help illustrate the unavoidable practical difficulties that will necessarily plague any attempt to have an IP--that is, pattern privilege--system. It helps to highlight why such a system cannot be but unjust. These kind of expensive and intractable problems, inherent vagueness and bullying tactics, will always accompany a patter privilege system. Any layman who is in favor of patent should read this letter, and think about the consequences of the system they advocate.

(Cross-posted at Mises blog)

Via Marginal Revolution and Boing Boing, Boeing (no relationship) has patented using the moon's gravity to adjust a satellite's orbit. It is however believed the patent would not stand in court, as it is merely rebranding of a physics law. Yet, given legal costs, the satellite is on its way back...

Under the headline, "SAVE THE U.S. PATENT NOW! IT'S THE HEART AND SOUL OF AMERICA'S ECONOMIC SYSTEM" the Professional Inventors Alliance ran a two-full-page ad in the New York Times (Monday, April 7, p A10 and A11, not available on line). The alliance has a website link here which has a single webpage with some of the thrust of the ad, but tells little more about the group.

It is an attack on the Patent Reform Act (S. 1145) and an ostensible plea to unions to join the Alliance in opposing the legislation. It asserts that "the fundamental dependence of America's economy [is] on America's patents" and that "U. S. patented inventions have been the primary source of America's historically unparalleled wealth." It also claims that "the growth of America's GDP [is] generated by American manufactures products and that there is "nearly universal opposition to the IT sectors self-destruct proposals for patent reform." It then identifies the members of the Senate Judiciary committee who voted for the bill and those in the House who did so.

It finally gets to what it calls the patent destroying provisions of the bill: tipping off potential infringers by the 18-month publication of pre-issuance submissions; replacing the first inventor-to-file in place of the actual inventor; restricting the apportionment of damages to the incremental value of the invention, not its total value; giving priority to venue for suits where the infringer resides; and allowing post grant challenges of patents for their entire 17-year lifetime.

Here we go again with the same questionable claim that patents promote innovation. More clearly, they provide some with large incomes. Who else could afford a double-page spread like this. It also identifies the issues on which the losers from the pending bill choose to fight it.

Via thenewspaper.com, here is another example of why patents on software and business practices should never have been allowed.

IBM has been granted a patent on a system which would monitor vehical traffic on the "premium" lanes of a toll road (presumeably using EZPass-type technology) and automatically adjust prices for those lanes to ensure they don't become congested.

Quite an innovation.

I'm going to sit down and write a script which uses information on housing prices and zip codes to advise merchants on how much to charge customers in those zip code areas. Then I can get a patent on price discrimination, too.

Chinese internet firms Baidu.com Inc. and Sogou (part of Sohu.com) have been sued in a Chinese court for allowing illegal downloads of music files. Here is the story in today's Wall Street Journal. The plaintiffs are the usual suspects--Chinese based units of the labels. Sony BMG Music, Warner Music Group, and Viviendi are suing both companies; EMI's Gold Label is suing Sogou.

The suits are for relatively small but still unprecedented (by Asian standards) sums ($9 mill for Baidu and $7.5 mill for Sogou), but could open the floodgates for real money, even by Sen. Dirksen's standards.

Baidu has revenue-sharing deals deals in place with many Chinese labels, including EMI. These have been nixed by the other majors.

Meanwhile, MySpace Music has cut a deal with Warner, Sony BMG, and Universal that offers them equity and ad revenue.

Here is the article, from Business Week, April 14.

Marilyn Monroe is dead but her image lives on as intellectual property and a source of wealth? link here Perhaps no longer. Photographers and other owners of her images have paid license fees to her estate under California law. Now, however, she has been declared a citizen of New York by the Los Angeles Federal District Court because the estate had argued to the California tax man that she was a New York resident. In California, the "rights of publicity" continue after death, but not in New York. The estate will appeal but grounds have yet to be stated.

Good decision in another trivial case. Who will end this plague?