Been very busy with other things, so this is a "catching up" post.

1. I was offered the opportunity to syndicate an article. Usually these things are scams, but in this case it seems to be legitimate. The article in question seems to have some interesting stuff about non-practicing entities (i.e. patent trolls).

2. Ruth Lewis has a nice post pointing to yet more example of innovation that thrives without effective IP.

3. Riccardo DiCecio points to a long and detailed article about the original of patent trolling in Wired...

4. and Sylvain Ribault directs us to an article in Nature that the Chinese are headed down our same bad path - but luckily for both us and them, haven't arrived yet.

John Bennett says this needs to be shouted from the rooftop.

There Are 250,000 Active Patents That Impact Smartphones; Representing One In Six Active Patents Today

I agree.

There is a lot of talk in academic circles about open publishing models - but mostly for journals. However efforts are underway for books as well: Openbook publishers has been taking the lead in this - they are the publishers of my recent book Is Behavioral Economic Doomed. They publish under a creative commons license that allows free reproduction and modification - yet we still think we can cover the costs and even make a buck or two.

There is a nice article about them here.

It is commonly thought that patents are good because people reveal secrets rather than keeping them. But they keep secrets about intermediate results so that they can be first to patent. Via Pedro Dal Bo a remarkable video about what happens when pharmaceutical discoveries aren't kept secret. It's a bit ironic that people think that for pharmaceuticals patents are the only answer.

This is what Apple "invented" the idea of sliding a latch to open something. But because they were doing it on a computer they got to patent it. Probably it cost some effort to work out the code to create the image and so forth - although if it cost them millions their programmers are incompetent - even tens of thousands seems high for that particular coding job. But here is the point: Nobody gets to copy their code with or without patents. The thing they actually paid for is protected.

The New York Times on patents. Original reporting and a strong bias in favor of patents - after all Apple says they spent millions of dollars developing slide to unlock and they'd never have bothered if they couldn't patent it!

Some very thoughtful - dare I say innovative? - remarks about patents from Cecil D. Quillen, Jr., former General Counsel, Senior Vice President and member of the Board of Directors of Eastman Kodak.

Fifteen minutes of fame. I think the Apple-Samsung craziness is starting to wake people up to what patents really are about.

An editorial in the St. Louis Post Dispatch...as you will see they consulted with the real experts. The best quote:

Apple ... sued Microsoft, accusing it of stealing software to create Windows. Microsoft's Bill Gates' retort to Apple's Steve Jobs has become a classic: "Steve, just because you broke into Xerox's house before I did and took the TV doesn't mean I can't go in later and take the stereo."

Sent Samsung sales through the roof?