Keeping politicians' hands off the Net & everything else related to technology
I don’t have a great deal to add to coverage of last week’s big patent story, which concerned the filing of a complaint by Microsoft co-founder Paul Allen against major technology companies including Apple, Google, Facebook and Yahoo. Diane Searcey of The Wall Street Journal, Tom Krazit at CNET News.com, and Mike Masnick on Techdirt [...]
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. [...]
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, [...]
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 [...]
My piece about the U.S. Chamber of Commerce event last Friday on U.S. intellectual property attachés giving a report, and taking a hard line, on the enforcement of U.S. intellectual property, overseas, is now live on ip-watch.org. Here’s the first couple of paragraphs: WASHINGTON, DC – Nations ranging from Brazil to Brunei to Russia are [...]
I attended the Federal Trade Commission hearing about the state of intellectual property on Friday, and wrote a piece about the event, “With US Patent Overhaul Dead, Agencies Ponder Changes As Industry Debates Role Of ‘Trolls’.” The piece appeared in ip-watch.org, the excellent Geneva-based publication run by my friend and former colleague William New. Those [...]
Arts+Labs, a new coalition “committed to a better, safer internet that works for both artists and consumers,” has written up Friday’s Cato Institute book forum on The Crime of Reason on their ArtLab blog. Author Robert B. Laughlin of Stanford University will present his book, then we’ll have comments from Tom Sydnor of the Progress [...]
If you find the title of this post provocative, you’ll be interested in a Cato Institute book forum on Friday, October 10th. In The Crime of Reason, Nobel laureate in physics Robert Laughlin argues that intellectual property laws and government security demands threaten the development of new knowledge. Without change, we risk bequeathing our heirs [...]
February 13, 2012
The Technology Liberation Front is the tech policy blog dedicated to keeping politicians' hands off the 'net and everything else related to technology.
