Congress doesn't usually intervene in individual patent cases, but here it has taken the first steps to do so link here. Thereby, big banks would get immunity against a patent lawsuit potentially worth billions in costs to them. The object of their attentions is a Texas patent troll, Data Treasury, which is demanding damages "for infringing on its method of digitally scanning, sending, and archiving checks."

There are several issues here. One is whether the patent is valid as the Patent Office has found--it isn't, if the invention is obvious, as seems likely to this reader. Another is, assuming that the patent is valid and that patents have any real value in promoting innovation, whether the inventor hasn't been cheated. But now, in addition to lawyering up, the troll has had to lobby up. Guess who pays.

The Feb. 25 issue of Forbes magazine has an interesting article on the causes and consequences of occupational licensure, "The New Unions".

Licensing laws injure the poor more than anyone (as if you didn't know). In at least one state, you have to be licensed to be a shampoo assistant.

Money fact: estimated annual cost to the U.S. economy: $100 billion.

Depressing fact: occupational licensing is growing.

Next up: tougher state- (and federally-?) mandated requirements for mortgage brokers.

An interior design professor-cum-rent seeker's campaign for monopolistic restrictions in that industry highlights the political process behind licensing. Don't dare call yourself an interior designer if you're merely an interior decorator.

Adam Smith, call your office.

Picking up on the trend to online publication, publisher Harper Collins is using this device to promote books by putting six (including the Paulo Coelho novel David wrote about link here) each month at its website link here. Fantasy novelist Neil Gaiman has riffed on the idea by selecting his online novel for posting online, based on the votes of readers of his blog from a list of eight at his website . The books will not be downloadable or printable.

Want cheap advertising? make it a contest.

The Harvard faculty will vote today on whether to publish scholarly and scientific research on the web rather than in expensive journals link here.

"In place of a closed, privileged and costly system, it will help open up the world of learning to everyone who wants to learn," said Robert Darnton, director of the university library. "It will be a first step toward freeing scholarship from the stranglehold of commercial publishers by making it freely available on our own university repository."

There is more to the proposal, so read the article and arguments against as well as for. But hopefully, the proposal will be adopted by other faculties as well.

The Washington Post recently editorialized on the high cost to students of the textbooks they are often required to buy link here. That prompted me to write the editor a letter pointing out the virtues of free online availability to lower student costs link here. It also avoids the moral dilemma faced by faculty members in pursuing their share of the monopoly profits, as well as the high cost of revising printed publications when the subject matter changes rapidly.

We get too few opportunities like this to spread the word.

The anonymous Patent Troll Tracker posts his latest compilation of Litigation Statistics for January 2008 link here. "At long last, here are my January 2008 patent litigation statistics. In total, PACER/ECF showed 230 patent cases filed in January 2008, compared to 210 in January 2007. This is a 10% year-to-year increase." See the rest of the post for lots of details on who, what, and where.

So the broken system is still with us and still shows no signs of improvement.

Writing in today's New York Times, Joe Nocera picks up an old story about Harry Potter author J. K. Rowling suing RDR Books for copyright infringement because it was about to publish Steven Vander Ark's Harry Potter Lexicon link here. The publisher is getting an assist from Anthony Falzone of the Stanford Law School's Fair Use Project, which was founded by Larry Lessig, allowing Nocera to do a riff on the growth of criticism of copyright litigation.

It is a cheering thought that some of the criticism of intellectual property abuse is finally making it to the main stream media. We will need a lot more of that if we are to get the laws amended in a reasonable way, promoting innovation rather than stifling it.

A federal appeals court upheld a lower court's 2006 ruling that a corporate consultant, who thought up American Express's "My Life, My Card" slogan, has no trademark rights in it. His claim is akin to an ad agency's marketing concept. Ad agencies get paid for their marketing and advertising work. So can this guy.

Here is the story.

The NFL has a rule to limit TV screens to 55 inches at public viewings. The league makes an exception for venues like bars and restaurants that regularly broadcast sporting events. But churches that dare to let their parishioners watch the mayhem on the big screen are coming under fire. Presumably, the league is not protecting intellectual property, but want parishioners to go to bars instead of churches on Sunday.

Alter, Alexandra. 2008. "God vs. Gridiron: As Church Super Bowl Parties Are Busted by NFL." Wall Street Journal (2 February): p. W 1. link here

Cho Jin-seo, Staff Reporter for the Korea Times, has written a puff piece for the Business Software Alliance, featuring Jeffrey Hardee, vice president and regional director of BSA link here. Hardee is flogging a study made by a research firm, IDC, purporting to show that piracy is rampant in Korea and costs the country billions. The study found that "about 45 percent of computer programs in use in offices were illegal copies in Korea in 2006." He goes on, 'The study demonstrated a 10-point drop in piracy over a four-year period can add an additional $1.4 billion to the economy. That is certainly an achievable target ... `For every $1 of software sold, it has a multiplier effect of $1 to $3 in the local industry, among channel and service providers. So the local contribution is nearly $1 billion out of $1.4 billion. $1 billion will stay in the country.'' An account of the benefits of piracy to the Korean economy is absent from this calculation.

I served as Economic Counselor in Korea in the 70's. We were continually harassing the Korean government to close the small shops that sold pirated software, but on the whole, the police were reluctant to prosecute poor Koreans, much less put them out of business. The Koreans I knew had little sympathy for poor Microsoft and that seems not to have changed.

We opponents of patented software have a problem, however, in pointing out how crazy the current American law on intellectual property is. Few in the American public, much less in the Korean, are aware how screwed up the system has become. In Korea and elsewhere, they also need to learn how IP as promised in our constitution to foster innovation has lost its way.