I'm leaving for Europe shortly, so don't have time for a long post, but there is a lot of news, so I'm going to put up a few links - check Slashdot, they are following these stories

Peer Patent Review: Looks like the voluntary patent peer review is underway for real. You may recall I've had some skepticism of this, but now we will see.

Secondary Copyright: I think this is a good thing: a court has given publishers that buy material from freelancers more control over the content, allowing them to use the material electronically without separate royalty payments. But I just looked at it briefly.

Maybe some of our readers can fill us in on what is going on with some of these developments.

You will find a much longer discussion of patent peer reviewing at link here. It is an interview with Professor Beth Simone Noveck, founder of Peer-to-Patent, who spoke with IEEE Spectrum reporter Suhas Sreedhar on 13 June 2007.

My initial reaction after reading the piece is that the process may quickly be dominated by the large companies. I am concerned that it will become captive like so many regulatory agencies in Washington, e.g., the Securities and Exchange Commission. I hope that others like readers of this blog will weigh in. Don't disappoint me!!

As I read through the description of the process, I thought it sounded promising. But one suggestion occurred to me--do the comments get posted so that others in the process can think and react and post their own reactions so that it can then go through several iterations? Such an interactive process would be a lot stronger.

Finally to readers of this blog: You may not want to get directly involved, but the academic community and IP followers know lots of people who might contribute. Let them know and recruit them. Otherwise this process is likely to fail.

To explore the process and sign up, go to this site link here