IPcentral Weblog: March 2006 Archives

March 2006 Archives

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03.30.2006

Supreme Court Roundup: Ebay

Yesterday the Court heard oral arguments in the Ebay v. MercExchange case. The first round of assessments suggests that the Court was not particularly sympathetic to Ebay's attacks on injunctions, but is very aware of the issue of patent quality and the link between the two (i.e. improvements to patent quality will strengthen the legitimacy of injunctions).

Promote the Progress links to J. Matthew Buchanan's article in Law.com (you need a subscription--how come one has to pay for all the good stuff? Oh, wait, that's a good point. Doh!).

An article by Nathan Mhyrvold in the WSJ also addresses the Ebay case, and inventors' rights. Excerpt:

The telling point in the troll debate comes if you look where tech companies pay big money for patents. It's not trolls, but rather small and completely legitimate patent holders -- the same ones that would be hurt by the "reform" proposals or the eBay case. As one observer puts it, Goliath is crying "Unfair! Take David's sling away!"

Excerpts from observations on the Ebay oral arguments from Hal Wegner:

Continue reading Supreme Court Roundup: Ebay . . .

posted by Solveig Singleton @ 8:21 AM | Big Tent , Biotech , Patents , Pharma , Prices, Terms, and Licensing , Software

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03.29.2006

Missing Third World Medicines?

The Civil Society Report on Intellectual Property, Innovation, and Health, just released, explains how governments, particularly third world governments, restrict access to healthcare with regulatory restrictions, tariffs, and by failing to protect intellectual property.

posted by Solveig Singleton @ 3:11 PM | International , Patents , Pharma

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Interoperability Mandates

Love the Tidbits piece Solveig directed us to on the French legislation to mandate interoperability. This passage in particular struck me:

Let's go one step further. As long as we're on the subject, what about razor blades? That was the first example of vendor lock-in, which this law is hoping to eliminate. Can I get Schick to translate my blades to work on a Gillette? And when I need new parts for my Saab, can I require Renault to make theirs work for me?
The real point of all this is that the French members of parliament are clueless about technology in general and digital technology in particular. They're opening up a huge can of worms in suggesting that interoperability should be guaranteed. While in principle interoperability is a good thing, in practice it is an absolute principle. You cannot expect it to work in one area without it applying in all areas. Why single out only music?

posted by Patrick Ross @ 12:29 PM | DRM & Watermarks, etc. , International , Legislation and Legislators

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Wikipedia Woes Cont'd.

Nature reporter Jim Giles e-mailed me from London defending the article comparing Wikipedia and Encyclopaedia Britannica. The magazine has no intention of retracting their article (see blog on Britannica's criticisms here) and has so stated in a letter.

posted by Patrick Ross @ 12:17 PM | Free Culture Movement

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More on France, iPod, Interoperability

From Tidbits, a user-friendly newsletter about all things Apple, an account of the French legislation that would require iPod to be interoperable... whatever that means.

posted by Solveig Singleton @ 9:04 AM | DRM & Watermarks, etc. , International , Legislation and Legislators

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03.28.2006

Torrentspy News

Torrentspy has filed a motion to dismiss a lawsuit by MPAA for secondary copyright infringement.
Details, provided by BBCNews, are here.

posted by Amy Smorodin @ 4:07 PM | Internet: P2P, Search Engines...

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A Rebuttal to EU Market Management

Jim has blogged about the EU's persistently anti-market approach to Microsoft. The Institut Economique Molinari in Brussels has published a compelling paper titled "Does the tying and bundling of products harm consumers?" The piece appears to be prompted by the Microsoft case but points out the far broader market implications of the EU's incessant pursuit of the software giant. Here's one excerpt:

The practice of tying can have advantages as well as disadvantages for consumers but the criterion of "foreclosing" suggested by the European Commission to distinguish harmful practices from others suffers from a fatal defect: it does not allow any distinction to be made. Consequently, any decision which is based on this criterion is arbitrary. Is there not nevertheless a means of ensuring that only tying that serves consumers remains on the market? Indeed. The selection of best practices is a by-product of the competition process in a market free of any intervention. Governmental interventions in this field can only block the permanent adjustment of production to consumers' wishes.

And the conclusion:

The stake at issue is considerable and exceeds the framework of a debate on tying and bundling. It is a matter of identifying the outcome of the transfer of decisions relating to the development and the sale of products in governmental hands. At the moment where the European Commission goes as far as choosing the name of an operating system from which it forced the manufacturer to extract his multi-media player, it is advisable to recall that governments are inapt at replacing the competing process of a free market to guarantee the best possible services to consumers.

posted by Patrick Ross @ 2:05 PM | Antitrust , International , Markets: Business, Investment & Innovation , Software

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Wikipedia Woes

Some of you may have seen that the Encyclopaedia Britannica has now responded to the Nature piece comparing it to Wikipedia three months ago. In that piece Nature hyped a study they conducted that showed Wikipedia to have only a few more errors than Britannica. Britannica, in the methodical way one would expect of it, has spent all this time breaking down the study, and has deemed it "fatally flawed." (See Britannica's report here.) The Register, hardly an enemy of the Free Culture Movement, has a scathing article on the Nature study, and Britannica's former editor in chief has a compelling essay in today's TCS Daily pointing out how quick Wikipedia supporters were to embrace -- and inflate -- the Nature study without actually examining it in a manner befitting, well, encyclopedia scholars. I haven't the foggiest idea why a respected publication like Nature chose to perform such a biased and irresponsible study, but it does seem that in today's media world we can't take anything at face value. I find that dismaying as a former member of the Fourth Estate. But I still trust the mainstream media more than I do Wikipedia.

posted by Patrick Ross @ 12:10 PM | Free Culture Movement

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Orphan Works--Questions

We are having an orphan works event Friday. So far my colleagues "take" on this has been that the Copyright Office is faced with a tough problem, and their solution was a reasonable one. But I am doing my best to think of some good questions for the panel...

Continue reading Orphan Works--Questions . . .

posted by Solveig Singleton @ 11:35 AM | Access: Commons, Fair Use, Orphan Works, Public Domain , Art , Legislation and Legislators

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03.27.2006

Mandating DRM Interoperability, in France and Beyond

Here is more from DRMWatch on the French legislation mandating DRM interoperability. A selection:

analysis shows that the provisions do nothing but undermine DRM. The problem is that the type of information necessary to achieve interoperability is also precisely the information necessary to render DRM useless: encryption algorithms, keys, content metadata, and so on. DRM would be reduced to the tiniest of speed bumps, easily surmountable with utility software that would become readily available. The boundaries between such "interoperability utilities" and circumvention software (hacks) would be erased, and the difference between legitimate and illegitimate uses of those technologies would revert to plan old copyright law -- which is where we started before DRM came into being.

But do read the whole article, very interesting.

posted by Solveig Singleton @ 9:12 PM | DRM & Watermarks, etc. , International , Standards

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03.27.2006

Patent Injunctions and the Supremes

posted by Patrick Ross @ 5:30 PM | Patents

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