There is a very good article in The Guardian about the new format battle between high definition DVD replacements, Blu-ray and HD-DVD. Sony is banking on Blu-ray by including it in the Playstation 3, which will mean that they will have some captive audience and a large boost from the Read more…
The EPO has just released a study conducted in 2004 by consulting firm Roland Berger Market Research on the cost of patenting in Europe. According to the study, an average EPO patent costs €30,530 EUR, where the costs are higher for Japanese and American companies validating in Europe. As further Read more…
IBM has joined other big players in the open source community and has expressed that it will use OSS in order to improve the quality of software patents in the United States. The idea is to have a searchable software code repository that will make it easier to detemine if Read more…
I am now back from the tropics. Thanks to Arne Kolbe, who kindly accepted to fill in with some posts while I was away sipping piña coladas and Imperial.
Are you feeling the Christmas blues? Are you sick of eating fruticake, turkey or tamal? Do you think that if you see another picture of Santa you will leave the room screaming? The solution is finally here! Let Slingshot Santa cure all of your problems.(Thanks to Rena for the link).
As usual, James Boyle has made an excellent comment in his always informative FT column, this time about the recently announced review of the database right. Could we be facing a turn in IP policy? As far as I know, there has never been a situation where an IP right Read more…
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…