From the Associated Press today:

Every day, millions of students taking online college courses act in much the same way as their bricks-and-mortar counterparts. After logging on, they move from course to course and do things like submit work in virtual drop boxes and view posted grades - all from a program running on a PC.

It may seem self-evident that virtual classrooms should closely resemble real ones. But a major education software company contends it wasn't always so obvious. And now, in a move that has shaken up the e-learning community, Blackboard Inc. has been awarded a patent establishing its claims to some of the basic features of the software that powers online education.

The patent, awarded to the Washington-based company in January but announced last month, has prompted an angry backlash from the academic computing community, which is fighting back in techie fashion - through online petitions and in a sprawling entry for the online dictionary Wikipedia that helps make its case.

Critics say the patent claims nothing less than Blackboard's ownership of the very idea of e-learning. If allowed to stand, they say, it could quash the cooperation between academia and the private sector that has characterized e-learning for years and explains why virtual classrooms are so much better than they used to be.

Read the rest here.

A Wall Street Journal ($$) editorial today warns that an obscure section of the old Smoot-Hawley tariff permits American companies to strike against their competitors by having the government block imports that allegedly infringe their patents. The Journal sees a threat to the mobile networks that depend on imported telephones. Here are some excerpts:

The peril comes from the International Trade Commission (ITC), an obscure federal agency that typically deals with trade but suddenly is telecom central. There are currently cases before the ITC affecting virtually every mobile-phone operator in the country and most of the largest handset makers in the world. Ericsson and Samsung have filed complaints against each other, and Qualcomm has sued Nokia. Broadcom, a chipmaker that owns patents for mobile-phone technology, has filed against Qualcomm, which supplies chips used in new phones sold by Verizon and Sprint.

All of these companies are seeking an edge against their rivals via "exclusion orders," which would ban the import of products said to violate U.S. patent (yes, patent) law. Depending on how the cases are ultimately decided, millions of cell phones could be barred from the U.S. market at a cost to the phone makers and network operators of billions of dollars.

The ITC was established in 1916 as the U.S. Tariff Commission. Smoot-Hawley gave it the authority to review claims of "unfair trade practices" based on patent infringement. If a company with U.S. operations believes a competitor is importing a product that infringes on its intellectual property, it can bring a Section 337 claim to the ITC. An administrative law judge then hears the case, and he can issue an exclusion order barring imports of the infringing product for the duration of the patent. The order is also subject to the review and approval by the six-member, bipartisan ITC board.

Incredibly, all of this takes place separately from normal judicial proceedings on patent infringement or validity. Most of the cell-phone cases mentioned above are also in court on patent-infringement grounds, but these cases can take years and are subject to lengthy appeals. The ITC tries to discharge Section 337 cases in about a year, and will not wait for the courts. Once the ITC votes on the judge's order, there is only one avenue of appeal: The President has 60 days to override the ITC's order. If he doesn't act, the import ban takes effect....

The big picture here is that the ITC has emerged as the patent bar's venue of choice to evade this year's Supreme Court decision in eBay. That ruling raised the bar on permanent injunctions in patent-infringement cases. But the ITC isn't subject to eBay, remarkably enough, so lawyers and patent holders have descended on the agency for a quick protectionist hit.

Oh, what a tangled web we weave....

CleanFlix will take your dvd and replace it with another that removes all the dirty language. Needless to say they got sued for copyright violation and lost. There is a bunch of good commentary about this, I'm just going to link to it:

Ed Felten

Tim Lee (he has a series of updates as well)

You can traceback other posts from there. The bottom line - no one seems to think this is a particularly good idea, although it may be the correct interpretation of the law. For myself, I'm wondering how the judge's view of copyright law

The argument [that CleanFlicks has no impact or a positive impact on studio revenues] has superficial appeal but it ignores the intrinsic value of the right to control the content of the copyrighted work which is the essence of the law of copyright.

squares with the U.S. Constitution which allows these monopolies solely

To promote the Progress of Science and useful Arts

His view is that people are more likely to create things if they can control the subsequent content of the work? That seems absurd.

I noticed that the AP had a spate of what appeared to be MPAA/RIAA press releases about the horrors of piracy in China and Russia. I was going to post on this, but Mike Masnick beat me to the punch, so I'll just link to his post, and limit my comment to "what he said."

A few days ago I saw an article - possibly in the Wall Street Journal, but I can't find it there - in which some business type said that he or she took global warming seriously. The best approach would be to strengthen intellectual property rights so that companies would have an incentive to develop technology to help newly developing economies.

Have any of our readers seen this so I can track it down?

The U.S. Supreme Court is about to take up the critical issue of the "obviousness" of a patent. CNET has an informative article about the upcoming case - although the Supreme Court has a long sad history of allowing the Federal Circuit Court to make up the law as it goes along. Needless to say

Last January, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit reversed an earlier court decision last that found patents held by Teleflex were "obvious" and therefore invalid.

Also of interest is

Microsoft and Cisco charged that the current test applied by the Federal Circuit "hurts innovation" because it establishes "far too lenient a standard for patentability." Cisco has even built up a portfolio of patents for "defensive purposes" in order to "neutralize" a proliferation of trivial patents, the brief said.

highlighting the fact that large companies probably have more to lose from patent law than gain.

(via Slashdot) An article on CNET covers congressional hearing on patent trolls. Leading the charge against patent trolls: Amazon. My favorite part of the article

"Could not Amazon.com be accused of being a troll for patenting the one-click?" Smith asked, a wry smile on his face.

Misener defended the patent as "a radical departure from the shopping cart model" when it was granted in 1998. "We only exercised the patent against someone who at the time...had publicly announced intention to crush our business," he said. "This wasn't some scheme to hit up small users."

Yeesh. Apparently a patent troll is everyone else who wants a patent except for you. While I'm generally in favor of patent reform that would make patent trolling more difficult, it is pretty clear that the legislation is being pushed by large companies that want to preserve their own ability to garner monopoly through patent, while making it harder for the little guy to do so. This isn't surprising, and it is the main reason why patents should be eliminated. As long as they exist they create an enormous incentive for rent-seeking, and the big guys are always going to win that game.

(Hat Tip: Gizmodo) USA Today has an article explaining how "unauthorized song swapping" (give them credit for not calling it theft) has been "contained." My favorite part: The RIAA has

also embarked on a very successful education campaign. Kids now know about copyright, and the consequences.

I also like the picture from Gizmodo that pretty much explains it all

I've heard the war on drugs is a great success too.

The New York Times today reports on a Seattle glass artist, Dale Chihuly, who is suing two other artists, one a former colleague, for copyright infringement. He claims they are producing knockoffs of his sea-inspired shapes and colors; they say that the lip wraps and ripples he designs "have been around for centuries." Bryan Rubino, his former collaborator says he could be ruined by the lawsuit, which of course is the point of it. What better way to knock off the competition than by knocking it off through the courts? It's less messy than using guns, knives, and fisticuffs.

Karrin Klotz, a copyright lawyer and B-school lecturer at the University of Washington, says that Picasso copyrighted a few lines on a pad because of their distinctiveness, but a 2003 US Court of Appeals said, more sensibly, that ideas expressed in nature cannot be copyrighted.

Scott Wakefield, Mr. Rubino's lawyer, gives us the money quote:

"If the first guy who painted Madonna and Child had tried to copyright it, half of the Louvre would be empty."

Where is the libertarian William Kuntsler when we need him? Jim Ostrowski, call your office.

In an an earlier post I talked about the Microsoft campaign against thought thieves. I finally found out what they must be talking about. They must be channelling Harlan Rook

All those films he made. Those are my nightmares, not his! Every night I dream, and somehow he reads my mind. He stole my thoughts. He put my thoughts on film, and he takes all the credit. He can't get away with it. He has to pay.