Reihan Salam of National Review weighs in and concludes that "the case against panicking over media piracy seems pretty strong."

Read his thoughts on the subject here:

http://www.nationalreview.com/agenda/263965/rethinking-media-piracy-reihan-salam

Andrew Cohen over at the Atlantic has a good primer on the important argument taking place this week at the Federal Circuit Court of Appeals:

In a closely-watched oral argument Monday at a federal courthouse in Washington, the core questions of the case read like scripts from a college philosophy exam: are isolated human genes and the subsequent comparisons of their sequences patentable? Can one company own a monopoly on such genes without violating the rights of others? They are multi-billion dollar questions, the judicially-sanctioned answers to which will have enormous ramifications for the worlds of medicine, science, law, business, politics and religion.

Even the name of the case at the U.S. Circuit Court for the Federal Circuit -- Association of Molecular Pathology, et al. v United States Patent and Trademark Office, et al -- oozes significance. The appeals court judges have been asked to determine whether seven existing patents covering two genes -- BRCA1 and BRCA2 (a/k/a "Breast Cancer Susceptibility Genes 1 and 2") -- are valid under federal law or, instead, fall under statutory exceptions that preclude from patentability what the law identifies as "products of nature..."

Read the whole thing here:

http://www.theatlantic.com/national/archive/2011/04/nature-vs-nuture-the-continuing-saga-of-the-gene-patenting-case/73359/

Felix Salmon alerts us to two Kauffman Bloggers Forum lectures with short online video-lectures on drug patents link here.

Salmon writes, "Two highlights of the Kauffman Bloggers Forum were the presentations on the broken nature of the pharmaceuticals market. And they came from opposite ends of the left-right spectrum: Megan McArdle went first, followed by Dean Baker."

Worth watching.

The Economist takes a look at the movie business and calls it ailing link here. It sketches out the trends and competition-induced changes from the rise of new technologies and the responses of consumers. Consumption has gone from movie houses to homes, from tape to DVDs to Blu-ray, from sales to rentals, from video stores to kiosks like RedBox and now to streaming on line. One gets the impression that this is a vibrant industry with lots of innovation but the industry sees its revenues declining and profits under pressure. Competition has kept the adoption of new technology rapid despite attempts to suppress it.

The article fails, however, to mention the fact of copyright and the long and stringent monopoly it provides, far in excess of the minimum to induce investment or innovation. That is evident by the rush to reduce prices and expand the services. Nor does the author address how the creator of these stories and films gets a very small part of the total revenue generated by the industry. I almost forgot the lawyers and litigation as a significant barrier to competition and maintaining prices higher than they would otherwise be.

It is difficult to imagine what the industry would be like without copyright. Even more innovation and lower prices? In reaching a conclusion, it is hard not to conclude that the consumer would not be still better off; he pays for all of this, in the form of high theater prices, and expensive media sales and rentals. This could not occur without copyright.

Wired.com notes:

On March 7, Camelot Distribution Group, an obscure film company in Los Angeles, unveiled its latest and potentially most profitable release: a federal lawsuit against BitTorrent users who allegedly downloaded the company's 2010 B-movie revenge flick Nude Nuns With Big Guns between January and March of this year. The single lawsuit targets 5,865 downloaders, making it theoretically worth as much as $879,750,000 more money than the U.S. box-office gross for Avatar.

Read the rest of the article here:

http://www.wired.com/threatlevel/2011/03/bittorrent/

That is law professor David Post's take on the continuing struggle between Viacom and Youtube which he writes about here:

http://volokh.com/2011/04/01/of-possible-interest/''

John Bennet draws our attention to a blogpost by Felix Salmon at Reuters.It's about a report by "Joe Karaganis and a big team of international researchers" which unfortunately I seem to be unable to access, at least without paying a fee. The report debunks all the made-up numbers used by the big media firms to direct U.S. antipiracy policy. The blog post is worth reading, and post a comment if you can figure out how to access the report. (There is link to scribd, but that site appears to be unusable.)

Some links:

from Michael Hills (Please note, the download link will expire after 120 hours from now or after 2 attempts, which ever event happens first.) the link works and I now have a copy - very good report

John Bennett gives a link to the movie.

Mike Masnick's blog post

John Fountain sent me an email about the first antibiotics, the sulfa drugs. I will quote (slightly edited) what he said:

I found an fascinating example of the way in which competition based on an old (1909) but expired (by 1930's) patent on a sulfanimide used in the dye industry ushered in in the antibiotic revolution in the mid 1930's.

The basics are contained in a wikipedia article.

The interesting facts are that the commercially developed chemical entity (Bayer I think) called Prontosil, for which patents were granted in the 30's, proved to be a flop commercially...because in the human body it broke down into bits and pieces. One piece - the "sulfa" - was the real "active ingredient. I like the authors description here "The result was a sulfa craze"! I guess at that time - 1930's - chemicals naturally occuring in the body weren't themselves patentable!!

Among the fastest growing problems within the realm of malignant monopolies is the disturbing frequency of abuse that lawyers now use to try and keep court documents under seal and away from public scrutiny. This results in a monopoly of information that is often abused by corporate powers within the legal system.

It is gratifying to know that the Federal Circuit Court of Appeals has sanctioned at least one attorney for abusing that process in the course of a patent infringement lawsuit.

There are a few dense legal passages in the opinion, but its worth a read if you have the time.

The full opinion in PDF format can be found here:

http://www.cafc.uscourts.gov/images/stories/opinions-orders/11-m976%20order.pdf

The latest issue of the American Bar Association Journal has a well written article explaining the most important patent case to reach the Supreme Court since the Bilski decision.

There's a major legal issue: To what extent should patents be presumed valid? [Microsoft] has been trying for years to get the Supreme Court to rule on this issue, and it appears the company is on the brink of success.

"This is a very important case," says Los Angeles attorney Glenn W. Trost. "The Supreme Court, for the first time, is going to squarely address the quantum of proof needed to establish the invalidity of a patent in patent litigation."

Read the full article here:

http://www.abajournal.com/magazine/article/court_may_make_it_easier_to_invalidate_an_invention/

It is especially funny to read the quotes from hard-core supporters of the current patent regime in this article, who all seem hell-bent on protecting their occupational turf (even if it means making it more difficult for genuine innovators to overturn weak or fraudulently granted patents).

However, the article does a good job at presenting both sides. Well worth the time to read.