Earlier this fall, the Court adjudicating Capitol Records, Inc. v. Thomas, vacated a $222,000 jury verdict because the Court found it had erred by instructing the jury that U.S. law provides a "making-available right." I have discussed the profound and numerous flaws in that ruling here. I discussed the downright disturbing flaws in Section K of that ruling, (which contains the Court's associated advisory opinion on copyright reform), here.

After the ruling, the Thomas Plaintiffs did just what they should have: They filed a motion to certify the Court's making-available-right ruling for an interlocutory appeal. Thomas is an ideal case for an interlocutory appeal: the recent self-reversal in Thomas would require the parties to re-try the entire case because the Court used internally inconsistent reasoning to adopt a minority position on a pure question of law that admittedly causes the United States to violate nine international agreements. Stronger grounds for an interlocutory appeal are scarcely conceivable.

Unfortunately, on December 23, 2008, the Court in Thomas denied the motion to certify an interlocutory appeal--for an absurd reason. According to the Court, there can be no substantial disagreement that it was bound to deny that a making-available right exists by the "binding precedent" established in the second of three alternative holdings in the contract-interpretation case National Car Rental.

Continue reading Update on Capitol Records v. Thomas: Motion to Certify an Appeal Denied; Petition for an Extraordinary Writ May Follow . . .

posted by Thomas Sydnor @ 4:24 PM | Enforcement & Remedies , Free Culture Movement , Internet: P2P, Search Engines... , Privacy and Security , Universities

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Defenders of the most egregious, blatant forms of online copyright piracy often suffer from what could be called Wile-E.-Coyote syndrome: They can become so fixated on throttling the roadrunner of copyright protection that they fail to notice that they have just run off a cliff and begun plunging downward.

For example, a federal judge has reportedly held that Boston University (BU) is such an incompetent internet-access provider that it cannot disclose the identities of allegedly infringing users of its network. In London-Sire Records, Inc. v. Does 1-4, Judge Gertner's recent order granted BU's "Motion to Quash" because "[BU] has adequately demonstrated that it is not able to identify the alleged infringers with a reasonable degree of technical certainty."

Continue reading Has Boston University Left Its Safe Harbor and Become Liable for Students' Piracy? . . .

posted by Thomas Sydnor @ 5:11 PM | Academia , Free Culture Movement , Internet: P2P, Search Engines... , Universities

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On Monday, I spent part of the morning listening to various academics and legal experts at "Copyright and the University: An Academic Symposium," an event hosted by ex-PFFer Patrick Ross. The event was meant to address attitudes towards copyright on college campuses.

The first panel, which followed a keynote by the US Register of Copyrights, Marybeth Peters, focused on "defining the problem." The panelists, adeptly led by Andrew Noyes of TechDaily, discussed everything from the attitudes of students towards the music industry to licensing arrangements for works included in course material. A few highlights and observations:

Continue reading Academics and Copyright . . .

posted by Amy Smorodin @ 2:45 PM | Academia , Enforcement & Remedies , Internet: P2P, Search Engines... , Universities

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On December 10th, ex-PFFer Patrick Ross is hosting "Copyright and the University: An Academic Symposium" at GW.
More info can be found here.

posted by Amy Smorodin @ 9:08 AM | Academia , Universities

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Aliya Sternstein's techdaily article "Moving the Campus Bookstore Online," covers proposals for the future of a digital marketplace and licensing clearinghouse for textbooks and a recent federal report on making textbooks more affordable, California state models, and publisher reactions.

The driving factor behind the study is of course the rising cost of education, of which textbooks are a part (a rather small part, but never mind). No one seems in a hurry to put the puzzle together; the two sectors of the economy in which prices notoriously rise with little accountability to consumers are education and medicine--two areas heavily subsidized by the federal government. Whither price sensitivity?

posted by Solveig Singleton @ 9:16 AM | Books , Internet: P2P, Search Engines... , Universities

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Fred Von Lohman's article in the Post chides a group of Congressmen for expecting universities to enforce copyright by fining or expelling students, or by installing filtering software. He urges instead that the university collect monies to pay the music industry for a blanket license for unlimited downloading, as they do for software. At least, it is not a compulsory license. And it seems to be a a reasonably practicable solution at one level. (One practical problem: does the license transfer the rights in the sound recordings only? Or the rights of the composers and such as well? Licenses for music distribution are notoriously hard to obtain because of this fragmentation issue. Set it aside for now).

But note one key element on which the scheme relies--in order to have any incentive to negotiate for a license, the universities and/or their students *must* be under some threat of liability. Withdraw that threat, declare downloading to be legal and legit, and the music studios lost their bargaining power. I am curious as to whether FVL would support this premise. He seems to be on the one hand objecting to the reasonableness of the threats, while supporting a solution that requires some kind of threat as a premise.

Continue reading Fred Von Lohman on Copyright In Universities . . .

posted by Solveig Singleton @ 9:12 AM | Internet: P2P, Search Engines... , Internet: P2P, Search Engines... , Universities

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Solveig will be speaking at today's "Copyright Utopia Symposium," hosted by the University of Maryland University College's Center for Intellectual Property. She'll be speaking on the panel, "Licensing and the Commons as Copyright Alternatives," starting at approximately 10:30.

To view a webcast of the event, registration and payment is required. More info is available here.

posted by Amy Smorodin @ 9:24 AM | Academia , Prices, Terms, and Licensing , Universities

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Professor David Mowery, from the Haas school of the University of California-Berkeley, has a set of Bayh-Dole related publications on SSRN that he has authored with other scholars, including Arvids Ziedonis, Bhaven Sampat, Richard Nelson.

I’ve followed Mowery for years, and am especially impressed by his contributions at the National Academies and the National Bureau of Economic Research. In addition to Mowery's work on Bayh-Dole, readers may be interested in his research on the history of innovation, open source software and the evolution of intellectual property rights in the software industry.

posted by Noel Le @ 12:03 AM | Academia , Patents , Universities

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A researcher from the Rochester Institute of Technology just posted an interesting looking paper on SSRN: Commercial Development of University Research: The Role of Patents, Contributions to Economic Analysis & Policy Vol. 5, No. 1, Art 19.

This paper analyzes how university patents encourage university-firm collaboration for technology transfer. Focusing on factors other than competition, I find that the two may not collaborate either because the firm finds in-house development cheaper, or because of a disagreement about the potential product's profitability. In both cases, university patents can encourage collaboration by increasing the invention's diffusion time, and therefore play a role even in the absence of any competition. The model also suggests instances in which we can expect to see a greater impact of university patents on collaboration....

posted by Noel Le @ 1:39 AM | Patents , Universities

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An interesting article in The Scientist , "Public Concern for Private Funding," on the increased role of private funding in research. Unfortunately, public funding has its own pitfalls, as described by Terence Kealey in The Economic Laws of Scientific Research. So where does that leave us? Looking for a set of guidelines that will enable the private funding of research while preserving the credibility of the results. I cannot imagine that is an insurmountable obstacle.

posted by Solveig Singleton @ 2:40 PM | Academia , Universities

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posted by Noel Le @ 7:43 AM | Patents , Universities

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posted by Patrick Ross @ 11:10 AM | Academia , Free Culture Movement , Internet: P2P, Search Engines... , Universities

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posted by Solveig Singleton @ 2:41 PM | Big Tent , General , International , Patents , Tax-Funded IP , Universities

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posted by James DeLong @ 8:53 AM | Universities

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