Apple has agreed to pay $100 million to Singapore's Creative Technology and allow it to supply accessories for the iPod to settle a software patent dispute over the interface that allows iPod users to select a song, album or track by navigating a succession of menus.

Both companies sought patents on the software, but Apple's was denied, while Creative's was granted. Creative then sued Apple for infringement and to stop the import of iPods which are manufactured in China ( see the NY Times article here).

This settlement again challenges the whole idea of software patents. Who pays? The consumer. Microsoft does not need a patent on Windows to keep out competition. It protects its technology by secrecy. But what is original and unique about a set of menus in simple, perhaps obvious processes using a set of related menus? Why then could Creative go home with the profit? Probably because Apple was concerned that its iPod source would be blocked and its highly profitable sales of music downloads for the iPod, said to be its biggest source of profits, jeopardized. And that its own software patents would be threatened if they generally came under attack. Remember,as well, "the International Trade Commission was conducting an inquiry into the dispute but this is now expected to end."

The Economist has a piece on a generic pharmaceutical maker challenging the patent holder. (linked here) Apotex, a Canadian generic firm, was coming out with its version of Plavix, a lucrative blood thinner. Sanofi-Aventis held the patent supposedly good till 2012 and marketed in the US through Bristol-Myers Squibb. Perhaps fearing the patent wouldn't hold up, Apotex was bought off until state Attorneys-General intervened, ending the deal, but still leading to a federal criminal investigation. Apotex went ahead and Sanofi responded by cutting the price of regular Plavix below the generic. The blessings of competition.

Richard Ekman, president of the Council of Independent Colleges, has an interesting op-ed piece in the Washington Post today on the arguments for universities supporting Google's digitizing all the world's books.
(linked here) Google would make a vast amount of printed material accessible to search and to limited use by students and scholars.

The article also notes that the universities have a conflict of interest in that they have their own publishing businesses. Faculties also have a conflict, to the extent that they write and publish texts. But it is in the overall public interest to make all printed material accessible.

It cites one helpful development: "Project Muse, begun in 1993 as a pioneering joint effort of the Johns Hopkins University Press and the university's Milton S. Eisenhower Library, makes available electronic "bundles" of current issues of journals to students and teachers in scattered locations. And JSTOR -- a coalition of journal publishers and libraries formed in the mid-1990s to create a reliable online collection of hundreds of older, little-used scholarly journals -- has brought these specialized works back into common use."

I wonder if there is room here for two kinds of copyright? One would protect the large-sale books, their authors and publishers. The other with small print runs would allow full access to digitized versions, including the right to download, not simply the right to limited search and quotation. The notion here is to protect authors who write to live, but prevent someone appropriating the uncopyrighted for personal profit. I think we need a good lawyer.