Via Christian Zimmermann: a patent on the combover

SO WHAT IF MUSIC JUST BECOMES FREE AND ARTISTS MAKE THEIR LIVING OFF OF TOURING AND MERCHANDISE?

Well therein lies the most stupid mistake anybody can make. The most important part is the music. Without that, why would you care? Even the idea that you're considering giving the music away for free makes it easier to give it away for free. The only reason why gold is expensive is because we all agree that it is. There's no real use for it, except we all agree and abide by the idea that gold costs a certain amount per ounce. As soon as you give people the choice to deviate from it, you have chaos and anarchy. And that's what going on.

School children and the Los Angeles-area Boy Scouts are now being indoctrinated (or maybe brainwashed is a better term) in the ABCs of copyright law.

Here is the article, which appears in the Nov. 26 issue of Forbes. Wendy Seltzer, a law professor, charges that they are being taught an overly broad system of copyright. Well, would you expect anything else?

Of course, it might be moot if they don't learn to read and write, which is a real possibility in this day and age.

David K. Levine points out in his comment to "Intellectual Ventures Patent Globaloney" below that non-producing patent trolls such as Intellectual Ventures are free to sue infringers of their patents, but aren't subject to countersuit.

There is another class of patent holders that can't be sued, as the Wall Street Journal points out today in "Critics Take Aim at California's Patent Shield" .

These are state entities that hold patents, such as the University of California. They are protected by the doctrine of sovereign immunity, which protects them from legal liability. They can sue but can't be sued. As the Church Lady used to say, "Isn't that special?"

In a case brought by Biomedical Patent Management against the state of California for non payment of royalties on a patented invention, the trial court judge criticized the fact that the U. of C. can reap the benefits of the patent system without the possibility of liability for infringement. Private universities don't have this advantage.

A representative of a software industry association says that these state entitites are competitors against private firms.

Unfortunately, the discussion has degenerated into parsing the 11th amendment and the question of whether states can be sued.

The judge in the biomedical case could have struck a blow for freedom by pointing out that Biomedical's patent violated the liberty of competing inventors, while potentially raising prices to consumers.

In the meantime the U. of C. and other state entities will go on hiding behind the doctrine of sovereign immunity. As Mel Brooks put it, "It's good to be the King." Or at least to hide behind his throne.

Starbucks is suing Conga Coffee and Tea, a tiny two-store operation in Michigan, for trademark infringement link here. Both use green circles around a small center picture, so there is a vague resemblance. But this is a case of an elephant trying to stamp on a mouse. Incidentally, Conga has been in business with the same trademark since 1996, and went unnoticed until now.

Tim Lee at Techdirt raises a question about the purpose of increased encryption of BitTorrent traffic link here, teeing off from a Brit story in the Register link here. He suggests that it is not designed to make it difficult to determine who is using BitTorrent that can't be done. But it would make it impossible to determine whether the material transferred is copyrighted. Given the prospect of filters being used to screen web traffic, it seems to me that encryption does exactly what a lot of users would want- make it impossible for the proposed filters to identify BitTorrents of copyrighted material because the filter won't work if it can't "read" the material. That in turn may increase the pressure to ban BitTorrents completely (already tried a bit by Comcast), but that will be much harder to pull off. An alternative already in use at some colleges and universities, pushed by the industry, would be to charge students higher web access fees and pay the proceeds to the music and video industry.

Nathan Myhrvold's firm Intellectual Ventures is trying to raise up to $1 billion to buy patents and to help inventors develop inventions. Although IV hasn't sued anyone yet, Mr. Myhrvold won't abjure such an action.

The Wall Street Journal reports here .

One of its goals is to deepen--and no doubt to widen--the "market" for the monopoly formerly known as intellectual property. And that's the rub. So called "IP" is a government-granted monopoly, and therefore is the antithesis of property, as that term is understood under natural law.

Making the market for "IP" more liquid is like making the market for slaves more liquid.

Ron Lurie, an executive at Inflexion Point Strategies LLC, chillingly points out that IV could send letters about its "800 patents that cover your business."

"[N]obody can risk going to court, and they're just going to write you a check."

How would you like to have that letter on your desk?

kdawson link here sends you to Declan McCullagh for the details of a draft law that would take federal financial aid away from universities if they fail to adopt a "technological solution to stop illegal file sharing." Behind the law is the Motion Picture Association of America which is mainly concerned with the loss of revenue from copies of motion pictures link here.

This is the second case in which offended industries have sought to make the government responsible for enforcing their intellectual property rights. We reported only yesterday that the RIAA was promoting to make the Justice Department responsible for finding and punishing internet violators of copyright.

This measure is buried in a 747-page spending and financial aid bill which you can peruse on line link here.

Peter Edidin at the New York Times writes that J K Rowling sued the publisher of the Harry Potter Lexicon by Steve Vander Ark, causing it to suspend printing while a court determines whether her copyright has been violated link here. The copyright is now apparently held by Warner Brothers, the Potter film maker, so it is not clear to me who is suing whom. In any case, the lexicon (a collection of words that make up the vocabulary of the books) started as a user-contributed website. Grounds asserted are that it "borrows too heavily" from the books and interferes with Rowling's plan to publish her "encyclopedia on the wizarding world." Rowling apparently said on her website that she took "no pleasure" in preventing publication.

But she will profit. This isn't going to end soon because there are fair use questions galore. And two beneficiaries, if we count Warner. Well, the court may decide in time for next year's Christmas sales.

In the meantime, Potter lexicon seekers will have to be content with online version link here.

Nate Anderson tells us that the Intellectual Property Enforcement Act, also known more colloquially as the Pirate Act, is back under consideration in the Senate link here. At its base is the attempt to get the Feds at the Justice Department to enforce intellectual property law, taking the onus and the cost off the business owning the IP. For example, the RIAA has been having trouble identifying the culprit who transfers copyrighted material on P2P links, much less getting evidence sufficient to convict. Given the power of the FBI, the Feds will no doubt do better, particularly since the government is already reading all our email. In addition, the law gives Justice the power to pursue cases as either criminal or civil, an advantage to IP owners as civil law requires a lower level of evidence to convict.

Consider writing your Senators.