The True Cost of the Patent Trolls: Half a Trillion Dollars

I've written a number of pieces about the inherent flaws of patents, especially in the field of software. Those are mostly to do with how the good intentions of patents are not realised. But alongside those who try to use patents as they were supposedly intended are another group who are essentially parasites - those who seek to game the system, and extract money from its weaknesses: the patent trolls.

Aside from the patent trolls themselves, few have a good word for them, since it's pretty obvious to everyone that they suck money out of companies that make stuff, and thus act as a brake on real innovation. But those feelings have been largely unquantified. Now, thanks to recent work of the authors of the seminal book “Patent Failure”, James Bessen and Michael Meurer, along with a third author, Jennifer Laurissa Ford, we have perhaps the first rigorous estimate of the damage they cause. It's even worse than we thought:

On Open Enterprise blog.

What Does Motoroogle Mean?

I am really quite relieved Google is trying to acquire Motorola Mobility. Not because I think it will solve all the problems of Android - it's far too early to say anything like it; but simply because, at last, Google has done something that might begin to address them.

On Open Enterprise blog.

Patents: Just Do the Maths

As I've noted, there is an sudden efflorescence of writing about the ills of the patent system. Obviously, on one level, that's great, but it's also becoming a little, er, boring. It means there are no contrary ideas to engage with, and that's dangerous for the health of the discussion, I think.

So I was really delighted to come across this post:

In the past few months, this rhetoric has grown to a furious roar, as the patent system seems to be affecting more and more of the technology industry in a negative way: small mobile app developers have been targeted with spurious lawsuits from companies that make nothing, major players like Apple, HTC, and Samsung are locked in patent-related litigation, and a pair of multibillion-dollar patent auctions has sparked an unprecedented war of words between Microsoft and Google. The most passionate critics loudly argue that whatever benefits our current patent system might offer have now been exceeded by its costs; that resources that should otherwise go to the development of new ideas are instead being misspent on the overzealous protection of the old.

This line of thinking has been so forcefully and insistently repeated that it has become almost axiomatic, an intellectual and rhetorical cheat that is rarely (if ever) questioned. But it’s also wrong — painfully wrong, in ways that sabotage any real attempt at reform. Being loud and angry is a great way to get attention, but it’s a terrible way to actually get anything done — especially since most of the emphatic chest-pounding sounds like a slightly dumber version of an argument we’ve been having in this country since Thomas Jefferson was appointed the first head of the Patent Office.

Splendid stuff - totally wrong, but splendid.

The article really makes two big claims. I'll address the second of them first, since it's more specific, and then look at the more general argument used.

If “the patent system is broken” is a lazy rhetorical cheat, then “software patents shouldn’t be allowed” is the most completely vacuous intellectual cop-out possible. The problem isn’t software patents — the problem is that software patents don’t actually exist.

What we keep calling “software patents” are just regular old patents; there is no special section of Title 35 that specifically delineates between hardware and software, or software and machinery, or software and anything else you might dream up. I don’t know when it became fashionable to pretend software patents were some funky and terrible new phenomenon, but it hasn’t always been this way: Y Combinator co-founder Paul Graham’s 2006 essay “Are Software Patents Evil?” remains one of the best holistic analyses of the software patent issue I’ve ever read, and it opens with “if you’re against software patents, you’re against patents in general.”

Well, yes, being against patents in general is certainly my position, but I don't think the author was looking for that kind of response. Instead, I'll explore his specific argument why software patents are just like any other kind:

But look a little closer and it’s easy to see that the boundaries between “just math” and “patentable invention” are pretty fuzzy. Every invention is “just math” when it comes right down to it — traditional mechanical inventions are really just the physical embodiments of specific algorithms. Consider the TurboTap long-necked draft beer nozzle, which was developed by a University of Wisconsin student named Matthew Younkle and granted US patent #7,040,359 — it pours beer faster and with less foam because of its long shape and internal structure. (I’ve conducted extensive… testing.) Isn’t that just a clever application of fluid dynamics? Where do you draw the line between the math that enables the invention and the invention itself? These aren’t easy questions, and we’re just talking about a beer tap. Things get even fuzzier when it comes to software, which doesn’t have a physical component to comfort our sense of justice. It really is just a bunch of math.

Now, speaking as a mathematician, I certainly concur with the view that everything is "just maths" in a certain deep sense: that is, we believe that we can, *in theory*, use maths to describe anything that exists. But in practice, some bits are trickier than others.

For example, take that TurboTap. As the author rightly notes, this is a "clever application of fluid dynamics" - except that it isn't. Fluid dynamics is one of those inconvenient bits of maths that we can't generally solve: the equations are just too complicated. Maybe one day some clever mathematician will come along with a clever method that will allow us to solve this stuff exactly, but I'm not holding my breath.

So what does this mean for the TurboTap? It means we can't design it using maths, because the instabilities of turbulent flow - which is pretty much all real-life flow - can't be calculated exactly. So the only way to design a TurboTap is to make lots of them, and find out which works best. In other words, you really have to *invent* the thing, because it's not discoverable from maths alone.

The same is not true of software. Although there are deep issues of checking whether programs work, the logic of a computer program is cast-iron: there are no fuzzy bits due to turbulence. If you simply apply the laws of logic and maths, you know exactly what will come out at the other end. So you are not inventing, you are discovering: those structures were always implicit in - and limited by - the rules of logic and maths, unlike the TurboTap that required human intervention to make it come into existence through practical exploration of Nature's unmapped possibilities.

This fundamental distinction between software patents and the other kinds is reflected in all the problems that are cited with the former: the fact that they are patents on knowledge, and the fact that you often can't invent around such patents, because that's like trying to invent around logic.

Most commentary has concentrated on the claims about software patents, but there is another that I think needs rebutting, since at its heart lies a profound misapprehension about patents today.

Here's the key paragraph:

Now, you can argue about the length of the patent grant, and about what specific inventions should be granted patent protection — these are all important and ongoing arguments. But the fundamental basis of the patent system is full disclosure from the inventor in exchange for an explicitly limited term of protection, and any effort to identify problems and reform the system has to respect the value both sides derive from that exchange.

That's certainly true, but the question that needs to be asked is whether the benefit obtained from patents through such disclosure is now being outweighed by the cost to companies and society of the litigation over patents that the growing patent thickets are giving rise to.

As I've argued elsewhere, the key issue here is that the patent system was created in the 15th century, when inventors and inventions were scarce; disclosure was extremely valuable for the reasons the article rightly emphasises. Today we live in a world of inventive abundance: there is simply no shortage of inventors or inventions. So we no longer need to pay the price of granting intellectual monopolies to people. People will still invent and make money from their inventions even if they are not protected by patents. Because the fewer patents there are, the more valuable each becomes, which encourages more people to invent until equilibrium is attained.

Ironically, the article I've been exploring provides a good example of why the patent system is grinding to a halt, and why it is simply not sustainable.

In his discussion of disclosure, the author points to Apple:

all those Apple multitouch patents are more than just attempts to prevent competitors from using a specific technology — they’re also detailed instructions for building that exact same technology in the future. Here’s a part of US patent #7,812,828, which Apple’s particularly fond of asserting in lawsuits: it lays out a system for tracking multiple finger and hand inputs on a multitouch surface and correctly filtering them.

(Amusingly, the two equations that follow, presumably quoted to impress us with their mind-bending complexity and originality, turn out to be a formula of speed - distance divided by time - and basic Pythagoras. Both are important, but of course trivial from a mathematical viewpoint....)

The patent in question is for "Ellipse fitting for multi-touch surfaces". As is customary, it begins by listing all the other patents that it cites. By my rough count, there are over 250 such citations of relevant technology. Judging by the dates they were granted, most of them still seem to be in force.

Now, some of them belong to Apple, but most of them do not, as far as I can tell. Since they are cited, they presumably have some relevance to the current invention, at least in terms of forming the intellectual background against which it was devised. I wonder how many Apple has needed to licensed because of that. After all, if it cites them, presumably at least some potentially represent important inventions that Apple is building on directly. Moreover, the ability for patent holders to block others from using its invention in further inventions means that there only needs to be *one* patent that its owner refuses to licence, and Apple has a problem.

I don't know about the particular details here - it might be that the citations are sufficiently distant from Apple's patent that they are not an issue. But 250 citations is a big number, and the bigger this number gets in patent applications, the more likely that at least one of them will demand royalties or block the new patent. Indeed, we are already seeing just such problems in the area of smartphones, where the patent thickets are already hampering innovation, and raising prices for customers as a result.

It's this downside of patent abundance that is the problem today. But as I've suggested, patent abundance is also the solution, because it means we don't need to provide an incentive to invent stuff any more.

The main problem with the post discussed here is that it doesn't step back to look at the bigger picture. Although it rightly discusses the original rationale of patents, it fails to relate that to the very different circumstances surrounding inventing today. When you do that, you find that abolition really is just a question of doing the maths.

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Patent Absurdity Becomes Absurdly Patent

Something wonderful has happened over the last few weeks: more people have woken up to the threat that patents represent to innovation.

I'd like to think that it was my call to abolish patents completely that started this, but it's more likely to have been the NPR feature that got people aware of this.

As well as NPR's own follow up, Forbes joined in with a call for software patents to be invalidated, and we even saw The Economist belatedly waking up to the reality of this intellectual monopoly.

And still they're coming. Here's Mark Cuban putting his oar in [update: and here's his solution - abolish software and process patents], while Dave Winer concluded a piece with the memorable line:

These guys [referring to Nathan Myhvold et al.] are so perfectly evil and on such a huge scale, it's as if they were out of a DC Comic.

Finally, we even had Dilbert on the subject.

So, now that everyone with a brain agrees there's a problem with patents, how about really trying to solve it?

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Is Format Shifting a Big Giveaway?

Yesterday I wrote about the BPI's reaction to the UK Government's response to the Hargreaves Report. Not surprisingly, the Musicians' Union (MU) also has a view here, specifically about proposals to allow format shifting:

In response to today’s government announcement of a consultation on a new exception to UK copyright law which would legalise the act of making a private copy of a CD, the MU has called for a fair compensation scheme to be introduced.

So why might that be? The MU has an interesting analogy:

“The device manufacturers readily pay for patents and the like on each device sold and yet the act of copying onto these devices the very content that the consumer is most concerned with – music, is not currently generating any income for the creative individuals who compose and perform and entertain the public.”

It's fascinating to see one intellectual monopoly being used to justify another. But what this overlooks is that manufacturers do not "readily" pay for patents: they are forced to do so by the government - which, of course, is precisely what the MU wants for its "fair compensation scheme".

Except that it's not fair. The MU says the music-playing device "is not currently generating any income for the creative individuals who compose and perform and entertain the public": why on earth should it? The musicians had nothing whatsoever to do with that device; they didn't design it and they didn't make it. It might never play any music, but be used for playing back recordings made in the home or outdoors, for example.

And if it does play back format-shifted music, the point is that by definition it will come from another a medium like a CD that the customers have already paid for - that's why it's called "format shifting". That means that the musicians will also have already been paid. So why should they be paid again for doing precisely nothing?

The MU's statement here is a real giveaway in the sense that it reveals the abiding and ingrained sense of entitlement that pervades all the creative industries. They are not content to be paid once like most people, but want to be paid again and again.

That is also evident in the concluding paragraph:

The Union has been robust in its opposition to this proposal and UK Music has adopted the MU position and is making the case for fair compensation to be made in return for the introduction of an exception. As part of this UK Music is examining the economic tool of ‘choice modelling’ to determine the value that the ability of being able to store music adds to devices such as the iPhone in order to present a robust argument to Government.

Again, even assuming that such a value exists, there is no reason that musicians should receive any more payments for it. That value has already been factored into the price of the music when it was bought, in whatever form, and into the compensation paid to the musicians who made it - that's how markets work.

Arguing the contrary makes as much sense as arguing that the existence of devices like music players and smartphones increases the value of the music played on them, because people are willing to pay more to have this useful extra capability. By the MU's logic, musicians should therefore pay a levy to device manufacturers for this added value the latter create for artists.

Of course that's absurd - as absurd as the MU's proposals that musicians should be paid again for the fact that you might actually play digital music on a digital device. The point is that all these kinds of "value" are already factored into the prices we pay.

Trying to argue that musicians deserves a cut of some of this nominal value is yet another example of the fantasy-based economics the creative industries regularly apply to the digital world. Maybe it's time they "shifted" away....

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Reviewing the UK Government Response to the Hargreaves Review

I've written a number of columns about the Hargreaves Review, and its generally sensible ideas. But, ultimately, those proposals mean nothing if they are not accepted by the UK government and implemented. That makes today's official response particularly important.

On Open Enterprise blog.

Why Defensive Patents are a Contradiction in Terms

I've been writing about why software patents are bad from every viewpoint for far too long, but I'm heartened by the recent upswing in interest by others, less obsessed than I am, which has resulted in a sudden flood of really intelligent reporting on the subject (this, for example).

Usually those pieces are just catching up with what has been said by many of us for a while. Occasionally, though, you come across a post that is genuinely original in its insights, and makes you exclaim: "now, why didn't I think of that?" This is just such a post:

A patent that is truly so original that somebody else wouldn’t arrive at the same solution by applying normal engineering skill is useless as a defensive patent. You can’t threaten someone with a countersuit if your idea is so brilliant that your opponents—because they didn’t think of it—haven’t incorporated it in their technology. The ideal defensive patent, by contrast, is the most obvious one you can get the U.S. Patent Office to sign off on—one that competitors are likely to unwittingly “infringe,” not realizing they’ve made themselves vulnerable to legal counterattack, because it’s simply the solution a good, smart engineer trying to solve a particular problem would naturally come up with.

Of course - it's obvious when you think about it. And it means that these so-called "defensive patents" are a contradiction in terms: if ideas are useful as a defence, they don't deserve a patent, and if they truly do deserve a patent (in theory, at least), they will be useless for defensive purpose.

What a fab insight - one that takes another huge chunk out of the arguments in favour of patents.

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Why We Should - and Can - Abolish All Patents

As long-suffering readers will know, I've been warning about the growing problem of patent thickets in the field of software for some time now. Until relatively recently, I and a few others have been voices crying in the wilderness: the general consensus has been that patents are good, and more patents are better. But in the last few weeks, the first hopeful signs have appeared that at least some people are beginning to realise that software patents not only do not promote innovation, they actually throttle it.

On Open Enterprise blog.

Damaging the DNA of Science

Here's a sad story, but not for the reason you might expect:

Developing therapies from human embryonic stem cells is under threat in Europe, say scientists.

In a letter to Nature, they express "profound concern" about moves at the European Court of Justice to ban patent protection for embryonic stem cell lines.

...

In their letter to Nature, the scientists argue that industry would have no incentive to invest in this area unless their innovations could be protected with patents.

This is the old FUD that unless patents are given for every possible advance, industry will never "invest". Well, even assuming that were true, scientists shouldn't be worrying about that: they are *scientists*, not managers. They are supposed to be motivated by love of knowledge, by the joy of research. Patents weren't allowed on the results of the Human Genome Project, and yet somehow that came to splendid fruition: why should stem cell research be any different?

And the idea that industry doesn't invest without patents is nonsense: that's precisely what happened in the world of software until a misguided court decision allowed programs to be patented in the US. But the introduction of patents in that field has led to a net *loss* for the industry of billions of dollars, as the book "Patent Failure" - written by two supporters of patents - explains in great detail.

The central motivation for innovation is not to get a patent, but to use that innovation to surpass rivals and win business as a result - it's a means to an end. Even if those rivals then use that same invention, they are still at a disadvantage because they are simply following in the original innovator's footsteps. And if they manage to develop the work further, then they advance the field and provide more ideas for yet more innovation - that's how things are supposed to work.

But what's really sad about this whole episode is the fact that scientists have become so corrupted by the trend towards turning knowledge into property that they can't conceive of carrying out exciting science without the nominal incentives of patents. This indicates that something bad has happened to very DNA of science - and patented stem cell research certainly isn't going to fix it.

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Of Apple and Android: Running Scared

The smartphone space is turning into a textbook example of why patents not only do not promote innovation as their supporters claim so insistently (though never with any proof to corroborate that claim), but actively block the further development of a field. Just look at the diagram at the bottom of this post from Techdirt to get an idea of how hopelessly entangled things are.

On Open Enterprise blog.

Ready for the IPRED Consultation?

This is just some quick advance warning that the deadline for submitting comments to the IPRED consultation is drawing near: 31 March 2011. I'll be publishing my own thoughts next week, but meanwhile, here's some background info for you to mull over.

On Open Enterprise blog.

Ethics of Intellectual Monopolies: the Video

I was pleased to discover last night that the video of my talk at FSCONS last November is now available:

Glyn Moody - Keynote: Ethics of Intellectual Monopolies from FSCONS on Vimeo.

Real masochists may wish to sing along using my presentation slides:

Glyn moody: ethics of intellectual monopolies - fscons 2010

View more presentations from glynmoody

Which just goes to show that you can have too much of a good thing...

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Why We Should Care about the Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP)

When I first started writing about the Anti-Counterfeiting Trade Agreement (ACTA) in 2007, practically no one had heard of it. That wasn't an accident, but a consequence of the attempt to keep the ACTA negotiations hidden behind tightly-closed doors.

On Open Enterprise blog.

UK Independent Review of "IP" and Growth

A couple of weeks ago I wrote about the UK's ”Independent Review of Intellectual Property and Growth”, which is currently soliciting submissions from interested parties. The corresponding Web site is very helpful, providing background information and an entire section that seeks to explain what exactly the review is looking for.

On Open Enterprise blog.

The Death of (Analogue) Patents

In a post last week, I wrote about the current obsession with “IP”, and noted some moves to make it more suitable for the digital age. In this post, I want to look at the other main class of “IP”, patents. Surprisingly, perhaps, I won't be talking about software patents, not least because I've written plenty on the topic. Instead, I want to consider patents on analogue - that is, purely physical - objects.

On Open Enterprise blog.

Fabbers: Mega-Damage by Micro-Patents

As my occasional postings on the subject indicate, one area that fascinates me is that of fabbers, aka 3D printers. One reason is that they effectively make our analogue world digital, in the sense that they allow 3D objects to be captured as digital representations, and then printed out. The other reason - a consequence of the first - is that by producing these representations, they transport many of the trickiest digital issues into the analogue domain. But more of that anon.

Of course, I'm not the only person to have noticed that the world of fabbers has the potential to bring the same kind of disruption to the analogue world that computers and the Internet have brought to the digital sphere. One benefit of this growing appreciation is that there are more resources available about 3D printers and related areas, and that they are becoming richer as the field grows.

A good example is a new report commissioned by the White House Office of Science and Technology Policy [freely available as pdf]. Indeed, I'd say that it probably represents the best single introduction to this whole field.

One virtue is comprehensiveness. As well as covering areas like fabbers (my own personal interest), it also discusses desktop milling machines; laser cutters and engravers; sewing and embroidering machines; and desktop circuit makers. It has a handy run-down of the main companies active in this area, including makers, aggregators and designers; and a detailed examination of the advantages and uses of desktop personal manufacturing devices. It is particular strong on the importance of educating the younger generation in these technologies - rightly so, since these will be the tools with which they will shape and build their world.

But for me, the most interesting part - because most problematic - is that which touches on the legal issues surrounding this rapprochement of the analogue and digital ways:

In our long tail world of media and information, files containing digital music, content, video, artwork, and data are easily copied. As a result, chasing down copyright violators of digital works has become as unproductive as chasing after a cloud of gnats. Preventing copyright and patent violations in the world of electronic blueprints and small-scale manufacturing machines will be equally challenging. The personal fabrication process spans both the digital and physical worlds and involves two components that involve intellectual property issues: the electronic blueprints and the resulting physical object. While one can protect a digital blueprint using digital rights management, this approach offers only a partial solution, since once the electronic blueprint is put to work fabricating physical objects, it can be used to produce as many objects as the maker wants to make. The resulting physical objects, unlike a music file, cannot be digital signed.

The report boldly suggests a way of handling some of these problems, encapsulated as one of its recommendations:

13. Explore micropatents as a smaller, simpler, and more agile unit of intellectual property

Here's its explanation of the concept:

An inventor would submit, for a few hundred dollars, a document describing their invention to a centralized government micro-patent repository. The document would be time-stamped and immediately publicly released, without having to be subject to the traditional tests of novelty, utility and non-obviousness. The inventor’s micro-patent application would claim very few fields of use, perhaps there could even be a mandatory limit on scope to qualify as a micro-patent. By filing this document, the inventor would immediately be granted an implicit, short-term (say 5 year) exclusive right to her new disclosed idea, as long as the idea was not already disclosed publicly earlier. Only in the case of alleged infringement, would intellectual property experts, lawyers, and the judicial system be brought to bear on the case with all the costs, time and complexities involved.

The key idea here is to offer "simple, agile and cost-effective intellectual property protection"; that is, making it easier to obtain patents, albeit lightweight ones. But in doing so, it will remove one of the few remaining barriers to patent applications, which inevitably will mean that every patent troll in the world will file thousands of trivial claims, since it will take so little effort or money to do so. It will give rise to the equivalent of patent spam.

Worse, these patent spammers will then proceed to sue huge numbers of inventors - and users - of objects made using fabbers. In fact it will become exactly like the world of copyright today, where tens of thousands of letters are sent out to alleged infringers, threatening to sue them but offering them a special "low-cost" way of settling.

Even more damaging, such a lightweight system will create a patent thicket around objects made with personal manufacturing systems that even nanotechnology will be unable to pierce. Again, we already have an all-too concrete example of what happens when it is easy to obtain patents for key ideas that are often indispensable for all users, in the world of software.

Before software could be patented, programmers wrote software by drawing on the commons of software techniques - and adding to that commons themselves. They didn't need to worry about "infringing" on someone's idea, because you couldn't get patents on ideas - just copyright on implementations of those ideas.

Now, with software patents being awarded in increasing numbers, things are so bad that it is probably impossible to write any non-trivial program without nominally infringing on someone's patent. That proliferation has led to dense software patent thickets, most notably in the world of mobile phones, where multiple companies are suing each other, wasting valuable resources that could have been devoted to creating more innovative products, not paying lawyers' bills.

The example of software shows us that patents simply do not work when applied to the digital realm. Indeed, the software industry spends far more money litigating software patents than it actually earns from licensing them. The fascinating book “Patent Failure: How Judges, Bureaucrats, and Lawyers Put Innovators at Risk” by James Bessen and Michael Meurer (Princeton University Press, 2008) quantifies this: the aggregate annual patent profits for software in the US were $100 million for the years 1996-9; the aggregate litigation costs for the same period were $3,880 million. There is no evidence that things are any better now.

It would be utter folly to import the worst features of the existing digital world into the new one that is emerging. Micro-patents will not foster progress and innovation: they will actually make things worse than the current situation, hard though that may be to believe.

The only solution is to have not "micro"-patents, but the limiting case where the size of the patent tends to zero - that is, none at all. Then, companies and inventors would compete not on the underlying ideas (which patents try to capture and monopolise), but on their *implementation* of them.

As well as avoiding patent gridlock, this also addresses issues of copying and counterfeiting, since people will pay more for otherwise identical products when they come provably from a trusted supplier, and also of safety, since it rewards better-quality products (not just patented ones).

As such, it's patently better than "solutions" based on intellectual monopolies that won't ever work (as proved by copyright and its attendant legislation, which have failed to stem the flood of shared music and video files in the slightest) and will actually lead to a net loss for companies forced to deploy them (as software patents and their thickets demonstrate). (Via Shapeways.)

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Why ACTA is a Doomed

There is a great new paper out with the title "ACTA as a New Kind of International IP Law-Making":

The ACTA negotiations are important not only for the potential impact of the treaty itself, but for what they can teach us about the dynamics of intellectual property law-making and the structure of the IP treaty framework. This paper draws two broad lessons from the progress of the ACTA to date which, while not entirely new, can be understood in a new light by looking at the detailed development of the ACTA text: (1) that the global IP 'ratchet' is not inexorable; and (2) that the international IP treaty framework is very poorly adapted to developing exceptions. The relevance of these lessons for negotiators, scholars and advocates is also discussed.

It's very thorough, and well-worth reading all the way through. But I'd like to single out the following section as particularly worthy of attention:

there is the question of public perceptions as to the value and fairness of the agreement. A perception that it is fair as between stakeholders is important to IP law, which it is not readily ̳self-enforcing.‘ By this I mean that IP law requires people to self-consciously refrain from behaviours that are common, easy, and enjoyable: infringement is so easy to do and observing IP rights, particularly copyright, involves, particularly these days, some self-denial. IP law therefore needs support from the public in order to be effective, and in order to receive any such support IP law needs to address the needs of all stakeholders. 135 Treaties that strengthen enforcement without addressing the needs of users look unfair and will bring IP law further into disrepute.

I think this is a profound point. As we know, copyright infringement is taking place on a massive scale, especially among younger members of society. It's clear that this is largely because they do not perceive present copyright law as either reasonable or fair, and so they simply ignore it.

ACTA will make copyright law less fair and even more unreasonable. The inevitable consequence will be that people will respect its laws even less, and feel even more justified in doing so. And so we have a paradox: the more that ACTA is put into practice, the more it will weaken the edifice it was supposed to buttress. (Via @StopActaNow @FelixTreguer.)

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Opening up Knowledge

I know you probably didn't notice, but I posted very little on this blog last week - nothing, in fact. This was not down to me going “meh” for a few days, but rather because I was over-eager in accepting offers to talk at conferences that were almost back to back, with the result that I had little time for much else during that period.

On Open Enterprise blog.

Google Bowls a Googly

One of the most shocking aspects of Oracle's lawsuit against Google alleging patent and copyright infringement was its unexpected nature. The assumption had been that Google was a big company with lots of lawyers and engineers, and had presumably checked out everything before proceeding with the Android project. And then suddenly it looked as if it had made the kind of elementary mistakes a newbie startup might commit.

On Open Enterprise blog.

Jamie Love on What EU Must Do About ACTA

Jamie Love has been one of the key people writing about and fighting the worst aspects of ACTA. He's just posed a good question on Twitter:

Why haven't the EU civil society groups done more on patents in ACTA? It is quite possible to get patents out at this point.

He then followed up with this suggestion:

Some type of a focused letter on footnote 2 would be very helpful, right now. This could go either way.

That footnote, by the way, says the following:

For the purpose of this Agreement, Parties agree that patents do not fall within the scope of this Section.

"This section" is Section 2: Civil Enforcement, and so the suggestion seems to be that we push for that footnote to be accepted by all parties. So, what do people think, can we do something along these lines?

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