Articles by Solveig Singleton

Solveig Singleton is a lawyer and writer, with ventures into ceramic sculpture, photography, painting, and animal welfare work. Past venues for her policy work include the Cato Institute (mostly free speech, telecom, and privacy), the Competitive Enterprise Institute (mostly privacy and ecommerce), the Progress and Freedom Foundation (mostly IP). She is presently an adjunct fellow with the Institute for Policy Innovation and is working on a new nonprofit venture, the Convergence Law Institute. She holds degrees from Cornell Law School and Reed College. Favorite Movie: Persuasion. Favorite Books: Dhalgren; Villette; Freedom and the Law. Favorite Art: Kinetic sculpture--especially involving Roombas. Most obsolete current technology deployed: a 30 yr. old Canon AE-1. Music: these days, mostly old blues, classical guitar, Poe, Cowboy Junkies, Ministry. Phobia: Clowns.


World IP Day on Thursday, the 24th of April

by on April 22, 2008 · 4 comments

I again post regarding: IPI’s Third Annual World Intellectual Property Day Event

WASHINGTON, D.C.–In our global knowledge-based economy, intellectual property (IP) is the key driver of economic growth, trade—and controversy. Debates over IP policy now rage both within and between countries, affecting domestic legislation and international agreements. Join the Institute for Policy Innovation (IPI) on April 24 for this year’s third annual World Intellectual Property Day policy forum, as we examine IP issues and solutions in America and across the globe.

Keynote Speaker:
Michael D. Gallagher
President, Entertainment Software Association

Digital Technologies: Emerging Challenges, Evolving Strategies
The online IP debate that was once framed as ‘content versus conduit’ is now more nuanced, with increased interdependence on both sides.  This panel will discuss strategies for allowing legal content to flow, in the face of new challenges from both free-riders and over-regulation.

Mitch Bainwol, RIAA
Dan Glickman, MPAA
Steve Largent, CTIA, The Wireless Association

Social and Economic Benefits of IP: Who Wins? Who Loses?
The debate over implementation of IP rules has frequently foundered over the issue of capacity building and the related challenge of demonstrating concrete social and economic benefits from improved IP protection.  This panel will look closely at current international capacity building efforts.

Lien Verbauwhede Koglin, WIPO
Michael A. Gollin, Venable LLP, Public Interest Intellectual Property Advocates (PIIPA)
Mohit Mehrotra, Excel Life Sciences

The Intellectual Property Marketplace: The Role of IP Valuation & Tech Transfer
IP is vital to the growth of wealth in today’s economy. Investors, firms, and universities strive to leverage their intellectual capital, converting “shelfware” into real assets, and attracting needed capital for product development. This discussion will examine the latest trends in new methods for the valuation of IP.

Usha Balakrishnan, Collaborative Social Responsibility Solutions
Abha Divine, Techquity
Robert Cresanti, Ocean Tomo

Combating (Dangerous) Counterfeits:  How Countries are Policing their Borders
The global trade in illicit goods is growing more sophisticated, harming —even killing— consumers around the world, funding organized criminal enterprises and undercutting sales of legitimate products. This panel will explore the challenges businesses and law enforcement face in their efforts to combat dangerous counterfeits.

Michael M. DuBose, U.S. Department of Justice
Nicholas J. Smith, U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement
Charles Williams, Cisco

EVENT DETAILS:
Thursday, April 24, 2008, 9:00 AM to 2:00 PM
Reserve Officers Association (ROA) Headquarters Minuteman Memorial Building
Minuteman Ballroom, 5th Floor
One Constitution Ave NE
Washington DC 20002

*A complimentary lunch will be provided

Seating is limited- please register today to confirm your participation

RSVP: Erin Humiston
(972) 874-5139 or erin@ipi.org

 

 

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IPI’s IP Day

by on April 15, 2008 · 5 comments

IPI’s Third Annual World Intellectual Property Day Event will feature panels on the latest content-conduit problem-solving (Digital Technologies: Emerging Challenges, Evolving Strategies with Mitch Bainwol of the RIAA, Dan Glickman of the MPAA, and Steve Largent of the Wireless Association).

The next considers the benefits and costs of IP (Social and Economic Benefits of IP: Who Wins? Who Loses? with Lien Verbauwhede Koglin of WIPO, Michael A. Gollin of Venable LLP and Public Interest Intellectual Property Advocates (PIIPA) and Mohit Mehrotra of Excel Life Sciences).

We move on to cover the valuation and trade of intellectual capital (The Intellectual Property Marketplace: The Role of IP Valuation & Tech Transfer with Usha Balakrishnan of Collaborative Social Responsibility Solutions, Abha Divine of Techquity, and Robert Cresanti of Ocean Tomo).

The last panel before lunch covers counterfeiting and enforcement (Combating (Dangerous) Counterfeits: How Countries are Policing their Borders) with Michael M. DuBose of the U.S. Department of Justice, Nicholas J. Smith of U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement and
Charles Williams of Cisco).

Then, lunch!

EVENT DETAILS:
Thursday, April 24, 2008, 9:00 AM to 2:00 PM
Reserve Officers Association (ROA) Headquarters Minuteman Memorial Building
Minuteman Ballroom, 5th Floor
One Constitution Ave NE, Washington DC 20002

To register, kindly contact Erin Humiston at erin@ipi.org

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More Free the Jefferson One

by on April 14, 2008 · 10 comments

Local news. Technology. Dancing. What happens when libertarian bloggers are arrested. http://www.theagitator.com/2008/04/13/so-about-that-tree-of-liberty/

 

 

 

 

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Patents and the Small Inventor

by on March 31, 2008 · 0 comments

Some thoughts from Tom Giovanetti.

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Monetary Policy Crashes the Party

by on March 19, 2008 · 0 comments

One sometimes wonders if the drive to return to a less massive state (let alone a minimal one) is worth it, given the low odds of success in the face of what someone (de Toqueville?) warned of: That democracy would last until the voters discovered they could vote themselves a bounty from the Treasury. As Jonathan Rauch adds, we have met the special interests, and they are us.

Another tactic? Hope that the private economy grows fast enough that the size of government remains relatively tolerable? Alas, that government was conceived of as a necessary evil, and thus tinkers around with the foundation of things, the money supply–potentially derailing the whole economic enterprise. There are more problems than spending. John Rutledge presents “the Fed Giveth and the Fed Taketh Away.”

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The Cybernetic Age

by on March 18, 2008 · 0 comments

A couple of scientists demonstrating voiceless communication. There’s a band around one chap’s neck that reads his brain waves. At present it has a vocabulary of about 150 words…

Wander down the street, wonder “where is the nearest restaurant?”, and hear the answer in your brain…?

I admit I’ve gotten so jaded by inventions (especially those in their early stages) that I can’t really get myself to react even over this one. But I did think it was worth noting. It has the potential to evolve into something that challenges concepts of privacy and property and calls for new ones. Rules on what others may feed into your brain, the default settings of commercial products that read in and out; whether such a device may ever be used against one’s will; the reliability of testimony based on on data read off of such a device.

Which is interesting, because at one time I would have thought that there really could not be new rules and basic rights, or ought not to be. One was pretty much stuck with whatever had evolved in a state of nature–for anything new like this, it would be a rule-less environment, a war of technology against technology. Want to keep someone out? Physically block it with your own tech… and so on.

But that sort of limitation on our rules of the game won’t do; it is far too limiting and arbitrarily so. On the other hand, this doesn’t mean anything goes. Difficult territory.

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The FCC in Boston–No Tea Party

by on February 28, 2008 · 7 comments

This account of the FCC’s Boston meeting on Comcast’s network management policies, from Tom Giovannetti.

Somewhere, there are more sophisticated arguments for net neutrality:

The setting where a monopoly infrastructure business, in pursuit of its own ends, could take arbitrary steps that would ruin one business and make another succeed, were regarded as inimical to a really free market. It resembled far too much the widely disliked markets without property rights, dominated by a capricious political power. So what followed was a long period of increasingly stringent regulation.

One might conclude from this discussion of historical precedents for regulation of networks that something like network neutrality ought to be attempted. My take in brief is that that Andrew’s paper understates the aspects of the cure that are worse than the disease and neglects the history of networks beyond a simple pricing story. It is time to try another approach. But there could be some interesting discussion.

Interestingly, though, the current trend in the Comcast proceeding bears no resemblance to a reasoned attempt to provide a real solution to any real problem, to consider the history of networks, or to consider a range of solutions and their tradeoffs. It seems to be an exercise in pure faddish populism. Curious. One wonders what a court will make of it. Mincemeat, I suspect.

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Musings on Freedom of Cell Phone Contract

by on January 23, 2008 · 5 comments

One of the curiousities of intellectual battles is the ability of the intelligentsia of one school to retrench and come back, using the vocabulary popularized by another set entirely to argue the opposite point. (A curiousity because one would hope that the relatively clever would steer clear of rhetorical devices in favor of clarity and making real progress towards understanding).

Free-marketers in the nineteenth century, then known as “liberals,” became popular with the working classes and the poor because of their support for the abolition of the Corn Laws and other benefits of free trade; economic interventionists tried to capitalize on this popularity by calling themselves “liberals,” and today the original reference of the term is obscured, particularly in the United States.

Another more complicated example: The success of free marketers in demonstrating that competition and choice serves consumers; offering empirical support for the fundamental point that contracts are a basic building block of a prosperous economic order. Today advocates of regulation build on this legacy by borrowing the language of consumer choice to attack the ordinary contract.

The Wall Street Journal Europe explores a variation on this argument concerning the iPhone. Kyle Wingfield notes, “Yes, consumers benefit from economic efficiencies. But it cannot be said that economic efficiencies are gained simply by creating circumstances that are attractive to consumers.” And goes on to make some interesting observations about the leftist allegiance to labor, rather in tension with their stance on consumers.

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Stockholm Network on Pharma IP & Developing Nations

by on January 22, 2008 · 0 comments

A new paper from the Stockholm Network on developing countries and pharmaceutical patents. In a review of the empirical literature, the report finds, among other things:

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Patent Reform Legislation Update

by on January 22, 2008 · 0 comments

The patent reform debate continues with commentary on Sen.

According to Hal Wegner, the Intellectual Property Owner’s Association reports that

Sen. Patrick Leahy (D-VT) will attempt to pass a revised version of S. 1145 in the Senate in February. Major amendments likely will not be available more than a few days in advance of Senate consideration….If the Senate does pass a bill, it likely will be sent to the House for swift passage by the House without amendments, eliminating the need for a Senate-House conference.

Whether the votes are there is open to question.

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