Alex Tabarrok on Marginal Revolution posted an interesting comment on J.K. Rowling’s Harry Potter wealth. Though it’s been up for 2+ days and generated several comments, I don’t see a mention of copyright anywhere. I think it’s very relevant. This is a blog of smart and aware readers and writers.
Update: Commenter “candid” spots a reference to “IP” in comment #3 at Marginal Revolution, confirming my observation about their writers and readers, and drawing into question my own capabilities . . ./Update
To see discussion of copyright, one must go to Matthew Iglesias’ follow-on. It’s not him, but his commenters who surface the intellectual property issue. Commenter “Rich C” says:
If Rowling (and her publisher) could not rely on an internationally enforceable system of intellectual property rights, her income would be a good deal lower. Rowling’s wealth is a product of protectionist policies, not free trade or technology.
A system of support for creative artists that does not depend on current forms of intellectual property protection (such as that Dean Baker has proposed) would still allow Rowling to live an extraordinarily comfortable life, but would sharply limit the windfall gains to her and her publisher. A system of real free trade in creative products would not increase inequality to anything like the degree we see with our system today.
I don’t know anything about this Dean Baker or his proposal, but I do think copyright is very relevant to J.K. Rowling’s wealth, and I think more people should be thinking and talking about its role in creativity, wealth creation, and sometimes windfalls.
(Via Will Wilkinson.)
The Federal Circuit says Vonage can continue signing up new customer while it appeals its loss in the Verizon controversy.
As Luis pointed out last week, Vonage’s hand was doubtless strengthened by the Supreme Court’s recent eBay v. Merc Exchange decision:
Note that per the court’s recent decision in eBay, this may work in Vonage’s favor in defeating the proposed injunction in this case. If the option is ‘no injunction’ or ‘make Vonage implement a workaround’, then the court is supposed to favor making Vonage implement the work around. If the option is ‘no injunction’ or ‘completely screw Vonage’s several million users’, the court is supposed to at least take that into consideration when discussing the injunction (though it may not be decisive.)
You’ll be shocked to hear that yet another patent trolling company has sued a major technology company over a vague software patent. Ars has the scoop. In this case, the plaintiff is “IP Innovation, LLC,” the defendant is Apple, and the patent in queston is this one, covering “User interface with multiple workspaces for sharing display system objects.”
I’ve gotten too busy to do a full “software patent of the week” writeup every week, but this certainly looks like it would be a juicy one. It’s got all the elements that make software patents so pernicious: it’s extremely vague, making it impossible for other software companies to be sure whether their products infringe on it. It’s extremely broad, apparently covering a variety of general characteristics of windowing systems. As the Ars article indicates, there’s likely to be prior art. Finally, it’s extremely wordy, with 62 loquacious claims and dozens of pages describing this “technology” in excruciating detail.
I’ve ranted about all of those problems before, so let me just make a brief policy observation: would anyone seriously claim that granting legal monopolies on the general characteristics of windowing systems is either necessary or helpful to the progress of the software industry? Microsoft and Apple spent the late 1980s and early 1990s battling it out for dominance of desktop computing, introducing numerous important innovations in GUI design. It’s hard to imagine Apple saying “Gosh, I just thought of a great new feature to add to Mac OS System 7, but it will cost a million dollars to develop it and Microsoft will just copy it in Windows 95. So why bother?” Apple and Microsoft copied each other promiscuously (well, OK, Microsoft mostly copied Apple) and consumers benefitted from it. Apple certainly would have liked to prevent Microsoft from copying their innovations (and in fact, they tried very hard to do so) but they ultimately were not able to do so. Does anyone think that consumers would be better off today if the courts had prohibited Microsoft from imitating Apple’s UI innovations?
According to today’s Washington Post, the FCC’s report on televised media content will be out within the week, and you can expect a whole lotta regulatin’ to be goin on once it hits the Hill.
In their article, “FCC Seeks To Rein In Violent TV Shows: Agency Will Recommend Law to Regulate Broadcast And Basic Cable Content,” Washington Post staff writers Paul Farhi and Frank Ahrens report that:
The Federal Communications Commission has concluded that regulating TV violence is in the public interest, particularly during times when children are likely to be viewers — typically between 6 a.m. and 10 p.m., FCC sources say.
…
The report — commissioned by members of Congress in 2004 and based on hundreds of comments from parents, industry officials, academic experts and others — concludes that Congress has the authority to regulate “excessive violence” and to extend its reach for the first time into basic-cable TV channels that consumers pay to receive.
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From IPcentral.info…
Tony Healy, programmer and Senior Fellow of the Institute for Policy Innovation, has commented before on issues involving the GPL, and particularly on ASPs. (See, e.g., GPLv3 and Web Businesses Is the Free Software Foundation Getting Tricky?)
He sends the following commentary on the ASP issue and the latest draft of GPLv3:
FSF betrays its followers with GPL v3
By Tony Healy — April 23, 2007
Amid the smoke and confusion around GPL v3, one thing is clear. The Free Software Foundation has wimped out of its intention to close the ASP loophole, thus betraying its programmer supporters.
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I’ve got a new article up at the American:
Technology companies have responded to the proliferation of bad patents by engaging in the patent equivalent of nuclear stockpiling. By obtaining dozens, hundreds, or even thousands of patents, a company can develop a credible deterrent against patent lawsuits: if someone sues it for patent infringement, it will be able to find a patent the other company has infringed and countersue. Vonage’s fundamental mistake was that it chose not to join this arms race. As a result, when Verizon sued, it was completely defenseless.
Software patents are particularly ripe for abuse because software is assembled from modular components. If the patent system allows those components to be patented, it becomes almost impossible to develop a software product without infringing numerous patents. Moreover, because of the complexity of software, it is often prohibitively expensive to even find all the patents a given software product might in principle be infringing. So even a software firm that wanted to find and license all of the patents relevant to its products is unlikely to be able to do so.
It’s not clear how any of this promotes “the progress of science” as required by the Constitution. Because of the high cost and uncertainty of the patent system, most software companies don’t even try to find patents they might be infringing. Instead, they sign cross-licensing deals with as many companies as possible, and they pray that the remaining companies won’t sue them before they’ve had time to develop a patent war-chest of their own. This is great for patent lawyers, but it’s not clear how anyone else benefits.
Readers of Techdirt may notice that I’m shamelessly cribbing from Mike Masnick, who apparently picked up the idea of nuclear stockpiling from MySQL CEO Marten Mickos back in 2004. It’s disappointing to find that their warnings are growing more accurate by the year.
In comments to my previous post on Verizon/Vonage case, Ben Klemens offers some insight into the reasons for the Federal Circuit’s permissive patent jurisprudence:
Fed Circuit judges take great pains to avoid policy arguments in their rulings. I think if you asked the judge why s/he allowed patents like these to stand (sorry, s/he’d lean heavily on how the patent has broken no rules, has correctly been put through the system, et cetera. To me, their interest is much more in maintaining and/or expanding the patent system then looking at the system’s effects on the non-patent world.
As for the part in the Constitution (Art. I, sec 8.8) that says that patents shall be granted to promote the progress of science and useful arts—which implies that a patent system that does not promote progress is unconstitutional—judges often take the attitude that that part of the Constitution is either unenforceable or just rhetorical fluff. It amazes me how much effort has gone into making sure that patent rulings in no way consider whether the patent, or any aspect of the patent system, is at all beneficial.
As for how anyone could seriously support the Federal Circuit’s patent rules, it seems the Supreme Court isn’t, and is slowly but surely reversing the CAFC’s expansions of patent law—often via arguments that rightly include a policy component.
We can certainly hope.
Matt Shannon questioned mine – and got an earful in the comments!
(It may be a coincidence / mistaken identity. Don’t assume I got my Google research right.)
Another reason you should listen to this week’s podcast is so you can hear Derek Slater discuss StopIllegalSpying.org, a website that EFF has created with the ACLU and others to pressure Congress to hold real hearings on the Bush administration’s terrorist surveillance illegal wiretapping program. I encourage you to check out the site and send a message to your Congresscritter.
In the podcast, Derek also updates us on other aspects of the fight against illegal spying, so I encourage you to check it out.
In this week’s podcast, James Gattuso asked about the possibility of a Vonage work-around for Verizon’s patents. The Indianapolis Star reports that talk of a workaround was just that:
Vonage has finally confirmed what many had feared: The embattled Internet phone company has no “workaround” in hand to sidestep Verizon’s patented Internet phone technology.
Moreover, Vonage isn’t sure that such a plan is even “feasible,” given the expansiveness of Verizon’s patents, which set out methods for passing calls between the Web and conventional phone networks. Vonage’s chilly assessment, contained in a filing submitted to a federal court Friday, marks the first time it has admitted that it doesn’t have a plan for getting around Verizon’s technology. Vonage couldn’t be reached for comment.
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