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Fears rise for national offices as Danish PTO lays off 35
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| The Danish Patent and Trademark Office has laid off 35 members of staff after
| seeing a slump in applications, a move indicating that national offices could
| be hit by the global recession.
|
| “In the fourth quarter of 2008 we saw a reduction in the number of
| applications,” Jesper Kongstad, director general of the office, told WTR
| yesterday. “On the basis of that we took the decision to lay off 35 staff
| from the Danish office.” The country has seen huge economic growth over
| recent years, especially in the real estate market. But this has now largely
| collapsed in a similar way to that of the United Kingdom. Nevertheless,
| practitioners in Denmark reacted to the news from the PTO with
| surprise. “This is a very drastic approach,” said Jeppe Brogaard Clausen, a
| partner of MAQS Law Firm. “It’s a very high number and laying people off in
| the legal market happens so rarely in Denmark.
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http://www.worldtrademarkreview.com/daily/Detail.aspx?g=04698e5a-f06a-42a2-90fe-77d53f73d5b8
Inside Views: The Last Defence Of The IP System: An Interview With Jamie Boyle
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| James Boyle is a leading thinker on copyright and knowledge access, and is
| author of a new book called The Public Domain: Enclosing the Commons of the
| Mind (available at thepublicdomain.org or here as a PDF). He is a law
| professor and cofounder of the Center for the Study of the Public Domain at
| Duke Law School. Boyle spoke recently with William New of Intellectual
| Property Watch on his book and recommendations for the new leadership of the
| World Intellectual Property Organization, European Union and the United
| States.
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http://www.ip-watch.org/weblog/index.php?p=1407
Recent:
Intellectual Property Regime Stifles Science and Innovation, Nobel Laureates
Say
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| Patent monopolies are believed to drive innovation but they actually impede
| the pace of science and innovation, Stiglitz said. The current “patent
| thicket,” in which anyone who writes a successful software programme is sued
| for alleged patent infringement, highlights the current IP system’s failure
| to encourage innovation, he said.
|
| Another problem is that the social returns from innovation do not accord with
| the private returns associated with the patent system, Stiglitz said. The
| marginal benefit from innovation is that an idea may become available sooner
| than it might have. But the person who secures the patent on it wins a
| long-term monopoly, creating a gap between private and social returns.
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http://www.ip-watch.org/weblog/index.php?p=1129
Economist Critic of Software Patents gets Nobel Prize
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| The FFII congratulates Eric S. Maskin, an economist who has long criticised
| the patenting of software, for receiving the 2007 Nobel Prize for Economics.
| Prof. Maskin and two colleagues receive the Prize for research into the
| optimal design of economic mechanisms. By applying his theory to the IT
| sector, Maskin demonstrated "that in such a dynamic industry, patent
| protection may reduce overall innovation and welfare."
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http://press.ffii.org/Press_releases/Economist_Critic_of_Software_Patents_gets_Nobel_Prize
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