Radiohead has released their new album directly on their webpage, skipping all distributors and other intermediaries. The files are available for download at a price of "It's Up To You", which includes $0. The whole thing is, not surprisingly, becoming a major success, with the web site crashing repeatedly because of too high demands and informal reports that they have sold around $10million in 3 days. No contract, no record company's right, no claim, nothing!

http://www.inrainbows.com/

Another brick off the wall.

The US Patent Office has issued rejection guidelines. You can read them in the Federal Register link here or read K.C. Jones summary link here. Here is my attempt to boil it down. "Factual inquiries" remain the basis for deciding whether a proposed patent is obvious. "That is, patent examiners will continue to consider the scope and content of the prior art, the differences between the claimed invention and the prior art, the level of ordinary skill in the pertinent art, and objective evidence relevant to the issue of obviousness," according to John Doll, commissioner for patents. Patent examiners must explain their rejection of an application as being obvious. One basis is if the examiner identifies a prior art teaching, suggestion, or motivation, but such a basis is not essential to determining whether an invention is obvious. The guidelines include examples.

"RC2, whom you probably know as the company that makes the lead-tainted Thomas & Friends toys, has filed a lawsuit against rival Munchkin, INC for allegedly infringing on a spill-proof sippy cup patent link here." Munchkin says it has patents that are pending.

My sister is 63 and she was raised on sippy cups. Where does this end?

Slashdot is on a roll today pointing to also to this Ars Technical article

The International Trade Commission (ITC) has announced that it plans to begin an investigation into several companies that either make or use certain hard drives. In a statement issued yesterday, the ITC said that the hard drives in question are alleged to infringe on patents owned by California residents Steven and Mary Reiber. The two filed a complaint with the ITC in September, saying that the importation of the hard drives violates section 337 of the Tariff Act of 1930.

But the good news is that if not for the prospect of being able to halt all imports of hard drives, we wouldn't have had this great invention in the first place.

Can't we just get rid of the patent system?

I have some vague recollection of a top Microsoft executive leaving to join an IP firm...this appears to have some details. The next move in the ballet was predictable

Patent Infringement Lawsuit Filed Against Red Hat & Novell - Just Like Ballmer Predicted

I don't suppose it requires a conspiracy theorist to see Microsoft as spinning off a subsidiary to spread legal FUD against competitors. Of course you might think the patent has some merit. Ars Technica has a rather nice summary the last time the patent was used in a lawsuit

The language of the patent is interminably vague and could apply to any one of a dozen different user interface elements that are found in all modern operating systems, but seems to be most closely related to the idea of "tabbed" dialog boxes, like the ones seen in both Windows and Mac OS X. Ironically, the company to first release a modern-looking tabbed dialog box was none other than Microsoft with early versions of Office, although Apple had a Control Panel with similar functionality as early as Mac OS System 4.2, circa 1987. It remains to be seen whether or not IP Innovations will go after Microsoft and other system vendors after they are finished with Apple.

The dead hand of Xerox reaches out from the grave...

IP in the News is constantly full of humor. Today's comes from India, where Harry Potter author J. K. Rowling and her publisher, Warner Brothers, are suing a religious group for erecting a replica of the Hogwarts School of Witchcraft and Wizardry. The replica is dedicated to the goddess Durga as part of a major four-day Hindu festival. The billionairess and her company want the equivalent of $50,000. They probably can rationalize this, but it does the reputation of copyright or them no good when it reaches the level of the ridiculous.

Rachel Aviv writes about college students getting organized to fight the RIAA's attacks on downloading copyrighted songs link here. She quotes one student, "I was stunned by the extremity of the punishment for taking songs I could have bought for a few cents ... It seemed grossly out of proportion." The threat was a lawsuit with possible fines of $750 to $150,000 for each song. He settled for $3000 but has gone on to co-found a chapter of "Students for Free Culture, a national organization sprouting up on college campuses that advocates loosening the restrictions of copyright law so that information from software to music to research to art can be freely shared." The group now has chapters on 35 campuses, inspired initially by Larry Lessig's 2004 book, "Free Culture". Outrage is a great mobilizer.

Astonishing.

I'll admit that if I was on that jury, I would have voted to acquit simply as form of jury nullification over bad copyright laws (not because I would have doubted that she actually downloaded music).

With that said, I think its actually a pity that the defendant here WASN'T fined the $3.6-million instead of the $222,000 that she was given. If she HAD been hit with a $3.6-million fine for copying 24 songs, it would have set up the perfect opportunity to mount a direct constitutional challenge to the punishments contained in our draconian copyright laws.

Cruel and unusual punishment anyone? I suspect that many courts might be willing to entertain such an argument - even those who would otherwise be inclined to protect harsh copyright monopolies.

That's what Lara Santoro argues (to which I agree).

Santoro observes -

Countries such as Kenya and Uganda, not to mention South Africa, have not only the manufacturing base needed to copy and reproduce drugs for a fraction of their cost, they also have the right. So what's stopping them? "There is a history of trade pressures," Love said. "Very few countries are willing to face such pressures."

Despite death on an unimaginable scale, talk of compulsory licensing remains anathema in most of Africa, so millions of lives are left in the hands of a well-meaning yet ineffectual group of international donors, whose solution to the problem has been to purchase and distribute generic AIDS drugs made in India and Brazil. It's a noble effort, but with pitiful results. Fifteen years after the invention of antiretrovirals, only one in four Africans has access to them.

But it gets worse. For many of those who survived thanks to first-line treatments, the time has come to switch to newer, less-toxic drugs -- all of them patented, none of them even remotely available. "We're starting from zero again," said Buddhima Lokuge, U.S. manager of Doctors Without Borders' "campaign for access to essential medicines." By the time generic competition kicks in for the newer drugs, millions of people will have died unnecessarily.

Read the whole thing.

The NYU chapter of Free Culture will host a screening of "Good Copy Bad Copy," a movie about copyright and culture, next Tuesday with two other groups. Lawrence Lessig and other copyright experts will be there.

More information is available here .