Greg Aharonian has named the worst software patent of the year in his PATNEWS mailing list, and I must say that I thoroughly agree with his choice. Behold U.S. Patent 6,910,071, which protects a “Surveillance monitoring and automated reporting method for detecting data changes”. Sounds impressive, right? Here is the Read more
What happens when works licensed under Creative Commons hit real life? My theory is that CC is no different to any other type of licensing in principle, and that posting stuff online will always leave one open to abuse, be it with proprietary or non-proprietary works. This is brought by Read more
According to The Register, Wikipedia co-founder Larry Sanger is to launch an alternative Wikipedia that combines the best of both worlds: wide public input edited by hired experts. This is definitely something to be curious about and it will be interesting to see how this approach works out. Arne
The latest issue of SCRIPTed is now online. Here are the contents: Editorial – The Adelphi Charter; John Howkins. Special Feature – Intellectual Property, Competition and Human Rights: the past, the present and the future; Abbe Brown and Charlotte Waelde. – Intellectual Property Rights, Competition Policy and Innovation: Is There Read more
This week Nature published a study on the reliability of Wikipedia in comparison to the Britannica encyclopaedia. 50 science articles were chosen from both encyclopaedias and send for “blind” peer review. The result from 42 returned usable reviews: Britannica turned up 123 errors, and Wikipedia 162. In regards to this Read more
A firm dedicated to flooding P2P file sharing networks with fake copies has been shut down. Overpeer was a company that started filling networks with copies that did not work in order to make it difficult for users to find music. They were initially paid by the music industry, but Read more
Creative is threatening to enforce a patent that they own on a system to navigate music on a digital player. Unfortunately the news source does not have the patent number. This seems like just another way of beating your competition. If their product is more popular, find a broad patent Read more
WIPO has published a study entitled “A Primer on Open Source Software for Business People and Lawyers“. Seems ineresting and I will read when I am back. Another interesting report has been produced by the The Brennan Center, called “Will Fair Use Survive? Free Expression in the Age of Copyright Read more
After taking time implementing the EC copyright directive 2001, France is now planning to force the copyright and neighbouring rights in the information society bill (DADVSI) through parliament using an emergency procedure. Due to heavy lobbying from the copyright industry, French copyright law may become the strictest in Europe (BoingBoing). Read more
(First seen on IPKat). A new study from the Treasury on the impact of IP to the UK economy has been announced. While this has to be welcome, it is worrying that the people who drafted the report on the website are unaware that fair use is an American legal Read more