Even if it doesn't, this article offers further proof of just how thoroughly corrupt our current patent system is.

A conference in Amsterdam two weeks ago discussed the "strategies for sustainable access and creative reuse of images and sounds online." There is a lot too read, but for an executive summary, see this blog. From what I gather, open access models are thriving in Europe, as archive maintainers have been able to convince authorities that it was money well spent, if government money is needed at all. There seems to be a general agreement that copyright is counterproductive. And this argument is not coming from theoreticians, but practitioners.

PS: A few minutes after posting this, I stumble on another account of this conference that more specifically looks at examples of some business models. Offering free downloads appears to be perfectly viable...

Pennsylvania has a consumer law that guarantees high prices! According to Pennlive.com:

The 1941 law is intended to prevent businesses from driving others out of business by selling goods at prices below cost. The goal is to protect consumers, because a company that wiped out competitors could then charge any price it wanted.

In this particular case, it prevents Wal-Mart to sell generic prescription drugs for $4, which have to be charged at least $9. Not surprisingly, independent pharmacists are fighting against a change in this law, given that they sell these drugs for $25...

So, we have a law that is supposed to prevent a future monopoly by instituting a cartel.

In Nobel Prize Winning Economist Explains How IP Rights Are Part Of The Globalization Problem, techdirt's Mike Masnick (who is heroically great on IP) notes the "fascinating speech by Nobel Prize-winning economist Joseph Stiglitz on Making Globalization Work. We've written about Stiglitz in the past, for his explanation of how patents often do more harm than good economically."

But not so fast. Is Stiglitz really that good on IP? As I noted in Patents and Utilitarian Thinking Redux: Stiglitz on using Prizes to Stimulate Innovation, Stiglitz has advocated replacing the patent system with a system for "awarding prizes"--presumably taxpayer funded--for innovations and inventions. In Scrooge and intellectual property rights, Stiglitz endorses a "medical prize fund" that "would give large rewards for cures or vaccines for diseases," which "prizes could be funded by governments in advanced industrial countries." Two cheers for capitalism! Or is that the other one?

The March 31 issue of Business Week had an interesting article on recent efforts by some fashion designers to sue their copiers, "Put a Patent on That Pleat." Stuart Weitzman and Diane von Furstenberg sued a couple competitors, including Target, which copied von Furstenberg's "spotted frog" print. Target spinelessly caved in and stopped selling its frog knockoffs, saying it respected others' "intellectual property." This is the kind of stuff Ayn Rand meant when she talked about "the sanction of the victim." (N.B. I am neither a Randian, nor an Objectivist; and I oppose her defense of patents and copyrights.)

But lo and behold, movie mogul and impresario Harvey Weinstein, who owns the Halston label, is moving to make its catwalk fashions available right off the runway at Net-a-Porter.com, with the idea of using a first-to-market model to beat the pirates at their own game and garner the rents earned from satisfying the market demands of demanding fashionistas first. Even Mr. Weitzman and others are innovating by designing original creations with new materials and patterns that make it harder for pirates to copy them. Some of the new materials are too expensive for knockoff purveyors to copy.

In September 2007, James Surowiecki revisited "The Piracy Paradox", the tendency noted by law school professors Kal Raustiala and Christopher Sprigman of fashion innovation to flourish in the absence of strong intellectual "property" protection.

via Mauro Mello Jr., probably best just to quote him

Here is yet another article on how people who want to believe can get really screwed up.

Courtesy of the music industry and its allies, this is yet another not-so-subtle stab in the back of people who purchased DRM-protected music (a.k.a. bona fide customers, the raison d'etre of the music industry, by the way). It is almost surreal, along the lines of "if you don't ever upgrade this one specific computer of yours, or if it doesn't seize for any particular reason, your (our) music is yours to keep forever (sort of)".

The article is here

19-0. There, I said it. The NFL Patriots are apparently pursuing steps to trademark "19-0" and thus hinder any team that would actually have a perfect season from using its actual win-loss result.

The trademark application would not prevent newspapers from using 19-0 in their columns, as the application is visibly only for silly knick knacks with a 19-0 mark. But the principle is vexing, like trademarking three-peat.

A story out of Korea today reports that the "Coalition of Anti-Privacy in the Korean Movie Industry" is pushing to close down eight P2P websites for pirating their movies link here. `Internet users illegally downloading movies and recklessly reproducing them is rampant here,'' said Kim Ji-hoo, spokeswoman for the filmmakers' rights group, as quoted by The Korea Times. The article produces some no-doubt-spurious statistics on the prevalence of such piracy and the cost to the industry to make its PR point. It also is reported to have started an education campaign to inform the public about the high cost and how wrong it is. Right out of the MPAA playbook.

This story makes the same point I just made in the comment on enforcing IP rights in China. These countries will enforce IP when they have domestic constituencies that will benefit. I wonder how the defense, that a site "making available" does not constitute piracy, will play in Korea?

TV network ABC's widely reported Obama-Clinton debate last week has produced some interesting IP related fallout link here. ABC tried to restrict outtakes by the other networks to no more than 30 seconds in order to protect its investment in the program from competitors. The restriction was widely ignored. Apparently, the other networks believe that "fair use" cannot be so narrowly defined.

Will ABC sue? Seems unlikely, but stay tuned.

China's patent regime (and I"P" system generally) is growing like a weed. Trademark applications there have increased 60% in five years. The number of patents issued has almost doubled to 850,000.

China has added 50 courts that handle I"P" cases. The lawyers are getting rich and, of course, are preventing non-Chinese firms from filing patents or representing clients in court. In fact, the lawyers are the main beneficiaries of the monopoly formerly known as intellectual property. Isn't monopoly great?

The Economist notes that under Mao private property was considered to be theft of the masses. However, it gets it wrong when it implies that the patent laws enacted in China starting in 1985 (and enforced starting in 2001) were consistent with private property.

Patents are a kind of theft of the masses. As Prodhoun should have said, "intellectual property is theft."