Here you see how all the overlapping claims make intellectual property unmanageable.

Heingartner, Douglas. 2007. "Patent Fights Are a Legacy of MP3's Tangled Origins." New York Times (5 March).

"The confusion stems from the number of companies and institutions -- including Thomson, Royal Philips Electronics and AT&T (through Bell Labs, now part of Alcatel-Lucent) -- that worked to create the MP3 standard almost two decades ago. The patent claims of those and others are increasingly being backed up by aggressive enforcement efforts, including lawsuits and even seizures of music players by customs authorities."

"Until now, the most prominent holder of MP3 patents has been the Fraunhofer Society of Germany, which was founded in 1949 and has become Europe's largest applied research organization. The division that helped develop MP3, the Fraunhofer Institute for Integrated Circuits, earns millions of dollars a year in licensing fees from software makers like Microsoft, which incorporates the format into its Windows Media Player, and from music player manufacturers like Apple. The payments -- typically $2,500 for a video game, or $2 a unit for music players -- are administered for Fraunhofer by the French electronics firm Thomson, which also played a role in the early development of MP3."

The Web site of the Fraunhofer: "Its detailed online history of MP3 portrays the format as an outgrowth of German university research in the 1970s, when German engineers began working on audio compression. One of Fraunhofer's leading audio engineers, Karlheinz Brandenburg, is frequently referred to in the German media as the father of MP3, a title he dismisses."

"But Alcatel-Lucent, which won the court judgment against Microsoft last month, has its own version of that history. It says Bell Labs (whose patent rights Alcatel acquired when it bought Lucent Technologies last year) was the main creative engine behind what went on to become the MP3 standard. 'A common misunderstanding is that Fraunhofer invented MP3,' said John M. Desmarais, the lead lawyer in the Microsoft case for Alcatel-Lucent, which is based in Paris. Though Fraunhofer was involved in the research that led to the MP3 standard issued in 1993, he said, 'Bell Labs had already developed the fundamental technology' in the mid-1980s, 'before Fraunhofer even came on the scene' .... 'MP3 has a lot of parts to it,' and 'two of the key parts are owned by Bell Laboratories,' he said, but 'that doesn't mean that other people don't have an ownership interest'".

"The group that made the MP3 standard official is the International Organization for Standardization, or ISO, a nongovernmental group based in Geneva that sets specifications for items as diverse as shipping containers and dashboard indicators. One of its many internal bodies is the Moving Picture Experts Group, or MPEG, a team of industry specialists established in 1988 to standardize digital multimedia formats."

"Many proposals were submitted for the first standard for audio and video compression, called MPEG-1, which was completed in 1992 and formally published in several parts in 1993. The chosen proposals included Musicam (also known as MPEG-1 Audio Layer 2, a format used in digital broadcasting) and Aspec, which went on to become the basis for MPEG-1 Audio Layer 3, now called MP3."

"Several companies -- including the Dutch electronics giant Philips -- claim patent rights to Musicam, and by extension, to a piece of MP3. 'In the case of MP3, it is very clear that this was not developed only by AT&T, Fraunhofer and Thomson, because it was based upon Musicam,' said Leon van de Kerkhof, a program manager at Philips Applied Technologies who was also a crucial member of the MPEG group at its inception."

"A spokeswoman for Thomson, Martine Esquirou, acknowledged that Fraunhofer and Thomson were not the only holders of MP3-related patents. 'We're not involved in this patent dispute between Microsoft and Alcatel-Lucent,' she said by e-mail. 'Thomson has not and does not license the patents in question'."

"Thomson's licensing program, she said, is based on 20 separate patent families that 'cover at least part of' the MPEG specifications. Thomson licenses these patents to more than 400 hardware and software companies."

"Muddling matters more, many of the companies on Thomson's list of licensees, including Apple, Microsoft, Motorola, Nokia and Samsung, also pay for additional MP3 licenses from Sisvel, an Italian company whose American subsidiary is called Audio MPEG."

"According to Sisvel, the MP3 patents it represents (on behalf of companies including Philips and France Telecom) are “compulsory for complying with the ISO standard.” Sisvel has aggressively enforced these patents -- for example, by having German customs authorities confiscate SanDisk MP3 players from the SanDisk booth at a German trade fair last September. In 2005, Sisvel sued Thomson over licensing fees for MP3 patents that Sisvel said Thompson had stopped paying; they quickly settled."

"In February, a little-known company called Texas MP3 Technologies also entered the fray, suing Apple, Samsung and SanDisk for infringement of what it said were its rightful MP3 patents."

Alan Sipress at the Washington Post link here reports that the Patent Office will begin opening some of its applications to public comment and that the process, initially experimental, may evolve and become Wiki-like. This is not new news as Slashdot reports link here and link here, but seems to promise more change, as the PTO is overwhelmed and increasingly criticized for its decisions.

We critics of the PTO and the evolution of IP law need to follow this closely to make sure that its decisions reflect appropriate attention to such things as prior art and non-obviousness. Is this the time to begin to organize to make our influence felt?

Anne Broache, Staff Writer for CNET News.com, (link here) writes that the House Judiciary subcommittee that originates intellectual property laws is cranking up to introduce a patent reform bill. Ideas broached in the piece include enough funding to hire an ample number of examiners and staff; meaningful, low-cost alternatives to litigation, requiring pending patent applications to be made public a certain number of months after being filed so that the public would have a chance to submit prior art; and restrictions on business method patents, a controversial class that grants protection to processes. Based on past experience, the prospects are not great because disagreements among interest groups have prevented real reform.

Those of us committed to intellectual property reform will need to follow this and weigh in with their own representatives and senators the only ones who will listen to individual constituents.

Techdirt earlier reported that Seth Godin, author of "Everyone's an Expert (About Something)," was unhappy because his book was published and for sale after it had been on line for free (link here). The story has now been resolved by the New York Times (link here.)

Originally licensed and published under a Creative Commons license that allows anyone to republish and sell it, Godin objected that it was dishonestly sold as a new edition. The publishers then put it out with a note that it was the same edition as the free one available on line. The author accepted that.

Nevertheless, the fact that the book was for sale produced some criticism of Godin as he could have put it out under a different Creative Commons license that allows anyone to make use of a published work but only on a not-for-profit basis.

It seems to me that the critics have got that wrong. Many people are willing to pay for the convenience of having a hard copy version and producing that has costs. If there is a profit involved, as some critics objected, that motive got the book printed. If the price were too high, others were free to print it as well, likely bringing the price down.

The consumer was well served here, better than if it had been put out under the more restrictive Creative Commons license.

UCC or user-created content has become a problem for Korean webcaster Pandora which is being sued for copyright infringement by Korea's TV networks (link here). The users have been editing short network broadcasts to make them funny or critical and posting them on Pandora.

UCC got more complicated when Korea's National Election Commission asked that obvious advocacy clips be taken down as they violated Korean election law during the short period when a political campaign is formally declared (link here).

Pandora which collects fees for advertising in connection with a post proposes to pay the stations half the fee and to cap the length of any video to five minutes. It has also proposed "reference rights" so it gets sued rather than the poster and "submitted a written statement to the National Internet Promotion Agency of Korea and the three national broadcasters - KBS, MBC and SBS - asking them to guarantee Web users the rights to 'freely edit' a certain part of a TV program, be it news, documentary, drama or entertainment show, in order to add fun or wit to the content."

UCC is apparently very widely created and viewed in Korea. As elsewhere, the broadcasters can benefit from the exposure as well as any fees Pandora would pay. Stay tuned.

Some investment advice: when a companies main business is filing lawsuits - sell short. Apparently the stitching on the pocket of your jeans is a trademark. Who knew.

DENISE CARUSO enters the lists on biotech patents for genes (NY Times link here), questioning the whole set of legalisms that have built up around them. Unlike product patents which can be improved on, "there is no analog to this network of obligations for a patent holder. As Tim Hubbard, a Human Genome Project researcher, noted at a 2001 conference: 'If you have a patent on a mousetrap, rivals can still make a better mousetrap. This isn't true in the case of genomics. If someone patents a gene, they have a real monopoly.'"

“This monopoly gives patent holders total control over patented genetic materials for any use whatsoever whether for basic research, a diagnostic test, as a test for the efficacy of a drug or the production of therapies.”

Several examples are cited in the article to suggest how against the public interest these patents can be.

In one case cited, "Patient groups filed suit in 2000, contending misappropriation of trade secrets by using their children's DNA without consent to obtain a patent. It took until 2003 for the parties to reach a confidential settlement; it allows certain laboratories to continue collecting royalties but lets institutions, doctors and scientists use the patented gene sequences without paying."

Dismal story. Read the rest.

Hackers are reported to have broken the encryption on DVDs by "stealing" the "title keys" to decrypt "high-definition DVDs through flaws in DVD player software" (yahoo link here). Title keys and some decrypted films have been posted on peer-to-peer Web sites for downloading. "The hackers did not attack the AACS encryption system itself, but stole the keys as they were exchanged between the DVD and the player to strip the encryption from the film." The high cost of writable hi-definition discs make large-scale copying of high-definition DVDs impractical, it is asserted. Both Sony's Blu-Ray and Toshiba's HD DVD are affected.

We'll see how long it is before the discs are widely reproduced. And to term the loss of keys as "stealing" is really a euphemism for the insecurity of the industry's so-called security. This was how elections may have been stolen in states using electronic voting machines.

Techdirt informs us that the International Federation of the Phonographic Industry (IFPI) wants the power to take down ISP service to anyone it claims might be sharing copyrighted music (link here). It is currently pushing the ISPs to accede that right in a move similar to what YouTube lets copyright holders do take down a video simply based on the copyright holders assertion.

Due process? What's that?

Slashdot sends us to a Chinese site reporting that Associate professor Wang Xiaoyun of Beijing's Tsinghua University has cracked the prize encryption algorithm in wide current use (Slashdot link here). The Chinese website (Chinese article here) claims are without confirmation and it sounds like some other overreaching past claims, but if true, it is going to put a lot of government and commercial practices at risk. In other words, big news, if true.