Keeping politicians' hands off the Net & everything else related to technology
Over at Convergences I ponder a version of Mark Lemley’s argument to the effect that confusing patents tied up in administrative disputes are in effect the same as no patents. I write: I recently read “Patenting Nanotechnology” by law prof Mark Lemley. Excitement about (and fear of) nanotechnology seems to be waning rather than waxing. [...]
This looks like a good one to me. An ITIF event tomorrow called “Info-Communism:” A Progressive Path Forward or a Political and Intellectual Dead End? Overheated rhetoric around information policy and intellectual property damages the quality of the debate. In this paper, featured speaker and Syracuse University information studies professor Milton Mueller warns against pouring [...]
Yesterday marked the beginning of the third annual US-China Internet Industry Forum (held this year in SF). The purpose of the gathering is to increase mutual understanding of key business and policy issues in China and the US. It is an invite-only event, so I was excited to be there with top government and technology [...]
The deadline for filing amicus briefs in support of the Federal Circuit’s attempt to trim back business method patents in Bilski passed on October 2. Many briefs have been filed, and much fuss has been made in the tech community, for business method patents are linked to the problem of software patents. Many software patents, [...]
Tomorrow, Friday, Oct. 2, the Information Economy Project at the George Mason University School of Law will hold a conference on Michael Heller’s new book The Gridlock Economy. Surprisingly Free will be streaming live video of the the conference kick-off debate between Heller and Richard Epstein at 8:30 a.m. (It will also be available for [...]
It’s good to see Google and Microsoft playing nice (for once): Microsoft has licensed the Exchange ActiveSync protocol to several other mobile communications players, including Apple. Horacio Gutierrez, a top Microsoft intellectual property and licensing executive, said in a statement that Google’s licensing of the patents related to the protocol “is a clear acknowledgement of the [...]
I should probably say a bit more about the substance of Ben’s property rights post, which wasn’t primarily a critique of people with tacky property rights websites. Ben focuses on the conceptually sound idea that property rights are really bundles of rights to dispose of particular things in particular ways. He emphasizes the diversity of [...]
Ben Klemens, whose work I’ve praised in this space in the past, has a new essay up that I found a little bit aggravating. It’s on the perennial question of whether it makes sense to describe patents and copyrights as property. I’ve been a critic of the term “intellectual property” for a few years. Ben’s [...]
One of the most fundamental disagreements in the debate over software patents concerns the Supreme Court. Some software patent supporters like to cite the case of Diamond v. Diehr as the decision that legalized software patents. Many others argue that the Supreme Court’s classic trilogy of software patent decisions from the 1970s and early 1980s [...]
Sid Rosenzweig, who recently joined PFF to study patent issues, has a very thoughtful piece about Apple’s new patent on the multi-touch interface on the iPhone, which ends as follows: It is striking how protection for user interfaces has changed over the years. It is not clear that patent protection for user interfaces is a step in [...]
May 22, 2012
The Technology Liberation Front is the tech policy blog dedicated to keeping politicians' hands off the 'net and everything else related to technology.
