The Economist magazine (though it calls itself a newpaper) reports on the recent US airwave auctions to provide additional band to wireless providers (link here). The bottom line seems to be that competition remains in the hands of existing firms.

"Despite hopes that a new national operator might emerge, the spectrum largely went to existing wireless firms (with the exception of a consortium of cable companies partly backed by Sprint).... The result is that today's broadband duopoly between the fixed-line telecoms operators and the cable companies is now moving into the wireless sector." Great news.

AFP reports that (link here)

Indian state Kerala Education Minister M.A. Baby said his government would promote the use of open source Linux operating systems along with Microsoft in high schools in Kerala, India's most literate state which has a population of 31.8 million.

"We are against monopolies of multinational companies in any sectors," he told AFP. "So we would like to provide equal opportunity for both Linux and Windows-Microsoft operating system in the school curriculum."

But "ideologically I support Linux and Free and Open Operating Systems for IT enabled-education in schools," he added.

Open source advocates will be heartened by this development, modest though it is, given the size of the world software market. Still, we will have to wait and see which operating system wins out. Competitive dynamics seem to favor the innovator. So far, Microsoft has stayed ahead by continuing to innovate and provide advantages to those who have already adopted its software.

There is pretty widespread agreement that the patent examination system is broken - too many meaningless patents that then are used by trolls for purposes of blackmail. In addition to public efforts to improve the existing system, there are private efforts. Among the most notable is wikipatents, a "wikipedia" like effort to provide community review of patents. Particularly with respect to prior art, where the patent office has not proved particularly knowledgeable, this potentially can lead to a significant improvement in the awarding of patents by providing greater transparency and informational input to the system. Go check it out.

In a case similar to one in the EU, South Korea's Fair Trade Commission found that Microsoft had violated its anti-trust law and must strip out Windows Live Messenger and Media Player, as well as pay a $34 million fine. XP will now be available stripped or with a link to a site with downloadable competing applications (link here). Whether this applies to sales of the forthcoming Windows Vista remains unclear.

A step in the direction of more competition, this does little to loosen Microsoft's lock on the operating system market. Most first-time computer buyers will take the easy course, using what comes on the new machine. Having learned to live with it, relearning a different OS is not a competitive option, and Windows retains the advantage from the many applications written for it arising from being the first to market.

The New York Times updates our earlier report on the drug patent dispute between generic maker Apotex and Bristol-Myers Squibb which claims a valid patent for Plavix, a blood thinner (link here).

A federal judge has now ruled that the challenged patent is valid but went on the allow Apotex to distribute what generic it has already put in the wholesale channel. Apotex will appeal the patent judgment. Bristol Myers expects a big cut in its profits this year as prices for the drug have been sharply cut.

More to come.

For a brief primer on how not to run a successful business see the business week article on the new Amazon downloading service. The short version: going out of your way to sell a not very good product at a high price is not a proven formula for business success.

Finally, there's the problem of how to watch these videos on the television, which remains the preferred place to watch for most people. Amazon's service, like others, allows a backup DVD of the digital files to be made, but that backup won't play in regular DVD players thanks to digital rights restrictions. A Windows Media Center PC can be cabled to a TV, but only through a relatively low-resolution S-video line.

Hmmm...a special DVD player or a "Windows Media Center PC" cabled to a TV. Sounds like a winner to me.

Although not strictly focused on issues of monopoly on intellectual monopoly Techdirt provides great coverage of IT issues of public interest - including patent and copyright issues.

The issue of software patents, particularly in regards to open source software, is increasingly contentious. According to Information Week,

The opponents of proliferating software patents who see them as a threat to open source software may finally get their day in court--the U.S. Supreme Court.

The critics have been itching for this opportunity for years. But the Supreme Court rarely reviews patent cases, which usually are decided by federal appeals courts. The top court, however, has agreed to hear three patent cases this fall, though only one relates to the impact of patents on open source software.

The full Information Week article can be read here

And stay tuned.

This is an older news item - from August 2 - but hasn't been widely reported. The Federal Trade Commission has finally issued a ruling in the Rambus case. Rambus you may recall is a notorious patent troll - famous for never actually building a memory chip, but for collecting royalties. In the ultimate submarine patent manuever, they not only patented an obvious idea and kept it secret, but then joined a standard making body, and without revealing they held a patent on the idea encouraged the body to agree on a standard that infringed their patent. This was a little too much apparently

In June 2002, the FTC charged Rambus with violating federal antitrust laws by deliberately engaging in a pattern of anticompetitive acts to deceive an industry-wide standard-setting organization, which caused or threatened to cause substantial harm to competition and consumers. The Commission complaint alleged that Rambus participated in the Joint Electron Device Engineering Council (JEDEC), a standard-setting organization that "maintained a commitment to avoid, where possible, the incorporation of patented technologies into its published standards, or at a minimum to ensure that such technologies, if incorporated, will be available to be licensed on royalty-free or otherwise reasonable and non-discriminatory terms." According to the FTC complaint, Rambus nonetheless participated in JEDEC's DRAM standard-setting activities for more than four years without disclosing to JEDEC or its members that it was actively working to develop, and possessed, a patent and several pending patent applications that involved specific technologies ultimately adopted in the standards.

The FTC has now ruled unanimously on the matter

In an opinion by Commissioner Pamela Jones Harbour, the Commission found that, through a course of deceptive conduct, Rambus was able to distort a critical standard-setting process and engage in an anticompetitive "hold up" of the computer memory industry. The Commission held that Rambus's acts of deception constituted exclusionary conduct under Section 2 of the Sherman Act and contributed significantly to Rambus's acquisition of monopoly power in the four relevant markets. The Commission has ordered additional briefings to determine the appropriate remedy for "the substantial competitive harm that Rambus's course of deceptive conduct has inflicted."

Chalk one up for the good guys.

(via Preston McAfee) Microsoft has now patented conjugating verbs

A verb conjugating system allows a user to input a form of a verb and display the verb forms. The verb conjugating system allows the user to input the infinitive form or non-infinitive forms of a verb. When a user inputs a non-infinitive form of a verb, the verb conjugating system identifies a corresponding base form of the verb. The verb conjugating system then uses the base form to retrieve and display the verb forms for the verb. The verb conjugating system may highlight the non-infinitive form of the verb within the displayed verb forms to assist the user in locating the verb form of interest.

I think I should grab nouns, and then negotiate with them for the movie rights.