] NEC Corp. asserted Wednesday (March 3) that it owns
] essential patents on carbon nanotubes and, as a result,
] all companies seeking to make or sell carbon nanotube
] materials must obtain licenses from NEC.

[ Wow. If legit, NEC's gonna rake it in on this shit. Time to buy NEC stock? -k]

EE Times - NEC claims carbon nanotube monopoly, offers licenses

[ Got this from lessig... an interesting, if simple, analysis of how a 95 year copyright term can be construed as effectively perpetual copyright, based on economics. It's only 1 page... read it. -k]

95yearC.pdf (application/pdf Object)

] Microsoft Corp. faces a trial in a patent infringement
] suit over the "autoplay" feature in Windows that
] automatically starts an application after storage media
] is loaded into a PC.

[ Of course, slash-drones are going on and on about all the prior art embodied in their amiga's and macintoshes and UNIX mainframes of old. Of course, as with all law, the devil's in the details, which only a lawyer can anlyze fully. Still, seems like if this one's upheld, Apple and Red Hat could be next... -k]

InfoWorld: Microsoft may face trial over 'autoplay' feature: February 10, 2004: By : Applications

] What's needed here is shame. Politicians know that most
] voters understand squat about how monopolies work best.
] They also know that there won't be a rally on Capitol
] Hill in favor of price discrimination. It is therefore
] cheap to scold big pharma for the "windfall profits" made
] by charging so much more for drugs in the US than in
] other countries. Cheap, and criminal. This behavior by
] politicians simply denies medicine to those who need it
] most.
]
]
] If politicians don't like the logic of price
] discrimination, then let them fund pharmaceutical
] research in a different way. Abolish drug patents, and
] grant rewards for great inventions, or give huge
] subsidies to universities and companies to develop new
] medicines. There are many who believe that would be a
] less expensive, more effective system. And there are many
] who believe that patents in any case, and in every case,
] do more harm than good.

[ A good analysis by Lessig... hits on a major problem with politics in general. The system makes it easy to say you "stand for" something that's actually intractible in the real political world. Seems like there should be a Consumer-Reports for politicians, comparing their stated positions to their real actions, calculating a "waffle score" for how often they are self-contradictory perhaps. My cynical side argues that no one would bother to use it, or partisans would refute it's accuracy... -k]

Wired 12.02: Lessig says access to drugs in the third world not an IP issue

] Blockbuster Inc. president and chief operating officer
] Nigel Travis on Thursday called for an end to regional
] coding on DVDs, saying they merely create more
] opportunities for piracy.

weren't the region codes supposed to prevent piracy? Oops! That was back when you needed a compliant, hardware DVD player to watch video...

Blockbuster CEO comes out against region codes...

the Post (no, not NY) takes a stab at patent issues...

] Intel's Grove derides such patent holders for showing
] little interest in producing goods with their inventions
] in favor of demanding licensing fees from others. "We
] call them trolls," he said.
]
]
] Acacia's patents lay dormant for 10 years, until the
] original company was bought out by some of its minority
] investors. Management is now making it one of many
] companies specializing in the business of generating
] money from patents, rather than using them to develop
] products directly.
]
]
] Robert A. Berman, general counsel for Acacia, said that
] many inventors and companies don't have the
] sophistication, expertise or money to commercialize their
] inventions.

seems to me like they should try to find someone who has those things, if they don't, and licence the technology to a developer. something feels wrong with a company finding a patent, letting it sit idle until someone else independently comes up with the idea AND makes the effort to commercialize it, and then smack them after the fact. It certainly doesn't seem to benefit the actual inventor, who in many cases is an engineer who's long gone.

i could argue the other side too, but i'll leave that to someone else... it's a complex issue.

the article also contains a quote from one CEO opining that 20 years of monopoly rights on software is "asinine to the point of ludicrosity". can't argue with that.

washingtonpost.com: Patenting Air or Protecting Property?

] Idris described how he had heard of children dying after
] using counterfeit baby shampoo and warned of the
] potentially disastrous consequences of relying on
] machines that had been made using an illicitly duplicated
] model.
]
]
] Last month, the World Health Organisation said that up to
] 25 percent of medicines consumed in developing nations
] were believed to be counterfeit or substandard, and it
] warned they could be useless, harmful or even deadly.

Perhaps if the machinery and medicines weren't priced out of the reach of developing nations, their people wouldn't have to resort to substandard replicas. I wonder if Mr. Idris has stories about how many people die because medicine and equipment is simply not available, because the companies that make them refuse to narrow their profit margins or relax their licencing terms...

Feel free to take the stand that IP is IP and needs to be protected and enforced, but don't you dare trot out the health risks of using pirate copies of medicine or equipment or whatever in places where the alternative may be death or sickness from lack of treatment of any kind. That just seems callous to me.

Intellectual property piracy is form of terrorism: WIPO chief

] a broad coalition of companies, technologists and
] Internet standards bodies -- which on many occasions are
] opposed to the way Microsoft does business -- have
] rallied to its defense.

to the defense of all web browsers, really. this was a bad patent, and affects everyone. we'll see how the review goes.

Net 'Outcry' Spurs Review Of Patent (TechNews.com)

] In other words, anyone viewing a Webcast of material that
] falls outside of copyright--such as a government-created
] documentary or a very old movie or audio recording--may
] not be able to freely store and redistribute that
] content.

Big webcasters have tipped their hand. They are now a worse threat then the RIAA. They have created an international treaty which makes it illegal to rebroadcast public domain material that someone has webcast unless the webcaster also disclaims "rights." This is unfathomable. Just like the DMCA, this law takes public domain material and makes it unavailable to the public. This isn't even about once copyrighted works not entering the public domain. This is about works that were never copyrighted being sucked out of the public domain.

Treaty could cast shadow on Webcast rights | CNET News.com

] "There are lots of reasons why people need anonymity
] online and why it should not be so easy to lose," Hansen
] said. "If the recording industry can uncover your
] identity simply by claiming that a copyright violation
] has occurred, then the Chinese government can use the
] same tool to find out the name of a dissident, and a
] batterer can use it to find out the address of a domestic
] violence shelter."
]
] The ACLU's lawsuit says the DMCA subpoena provision is
] "totally lacking in procedural protections," making it
] "an invitation to mistake and misuse."

RIAA news roundup. Only new information not covered here is the 41 percent drop in kazaa use over the last 3 months.

ACLU Steps Into DMCA Subpoena Controversy