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EU Finds Anti-Competitive Abuse Of Pharmaceutical Patents, Launches Antitrust
Action
,----[ Quote ]
| Pharmaceutical companies are manipulating the intellectual property rights
| system and are “actively trying to delay the entry of generic medicines onto
| their markets,” a top EU official said of an EU inquiry into the
| pharmaceutical sector released Wednesday. As a result, there has been a
| decline in the number of innovative medicines getting to the market, it says.
`----
http://www.ip-watch.org/weblog/2009/07/08/eu-finds-anti-competitive-abuse-of-pharmaceutical-patents-launches-antitrust-action/
Same for software. The great Patent Scam.
Software Patent Supporter Tries To Pretend Google Harmed Without Software
Patents
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| There's a somewhat bizarre and ethically questionable post up on the usually
| excellent Patently-O blog, hyping up the fact that Google may lose its patent
| on PageRank (which Google only holds a license to, since Stanford actually
| owns it). First off, this isn't new or particularly surprising. It's talking
| about the upcoming decision on the Bilski case, which we've discussed at
| length. The decision could impact all software patents, and the author is
| merely using the Google name to get extra attention.
`----
http://www.techdirt.com/articles/20080722/0851291757.shtml
In Re Bilski kills software patent:
DealerTrack to Appeal District Court Ruling in Patent Infringement Lawsuit
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| DealerTrack Holdings, Inc. (Nasdaq: TRAK), a leading provider of on-demand
| software and data solutions for the U.S. automotive retail industry, today
| announced an update regarding its patent infringement litigation against
| RouteOne LLC and Finance Express LLC.
|
| [...]
|
| DealerTrack also has pending patent applications in the United States Patent
| and Trademark Office that would not be impacted by the Bilski decision.
`----
http://www.businesswire.com/portal/site/google/?ndmViewId=news_view&newsId=20090708006020&newsLang=en
IBM gets stung for its patent greed:
Mosaid sues IBM for patent infringement
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| Patent licensing firm Mosaid Technologies Inc said on Monday it was taking
| IBM to court for allegedly infringing on six of Mosaid's U.S. patents.
|
| Mosaid said the long-running dispute was over IBM's making and selling of
| microprocessor and application specific integrated circuit (ASIC) products.
`----
http://www.reuters.com/article/technologyNews/idUSTRE56C6AI20090713
Recent:
Intellectual “Property” Versus Real Property
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| Intellectual “property” (IP) is a sleeper issue. It seems uncontroversial:
| Someone invents or writes something and therefore owns it. What could be
| plainer? But IP contains the power to destroy liberty.
|
| IP isn’t merely about rock bands preventing kids from sharing MP3s over the
| Internet. (See “Weird Al” Yankovic’s musical commentary, “Don’t Download This
| Song,” here.) It’s about crusty incumbent firms trying to preserve market
| share by stifling competition, domestically and in the developing world.
`----
http://fee.org/articles/tgif/intellectual-property/
Get Your Hands Out of my Genes!
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| Our genes might be practically open to discovery, there's very little
| physically I can do to prevent you from acquiring my genes and unraveling my
| genetic code. But that doesn't mean it wouldn't be disturbing or unethical if
| you did this. The knowledge you could get about me, and use against me, is
| just too potentially disruptive to decide that we are not somehow each
| custodians, and maybe even more properly guardians, of our individual genetic
| data.
|
| At the same time, the genome we share cannot be cordoned off. To the degree
| that our genetic information is mostly the same, we should all have access to
| it. No one should be able to claim that if we want to peek around, learn some
| more, and do some studies on this common genetic code, we somehow have to pay
| for this. Our "common genetic heritage" is, I argue, an actual commons like
| the sky, sunlight, or international waters. We should treat it as such.
`----
http://whoownsyou-drkoepsell.blogspot.com/2009/06/keep-your-eyes-off-my-genes.html
Another Example Of Patents Putting Lives At Risk
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| Given that Shafer refused to live up to the terms of the deal that he had
| never agreed to in the first place, ABL moved forward and sued Shafer
| directly, and that case is now ongoing -- even as Shafer hopes to invalidate
| the patent through the Patent Office itself. The whole thing is yet another
| story of how patents are being used to stifle innovation -- and sometimes put
| lives at risk. It's tragic that we've been seeing so many such stories
| lately.
`----
http://techdirt.com/articles/20090610/2202565196.shtml
harmfulpatents.org
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| More than 20 years after medical expert systems were first developed, the
| USPTO issued two patents simply on the concept of using a computer to help
| physicians choose medical treatments. A company that purchased these patents
| claims that "the diagnosis and treatment of most chronic diseases will fall
| under the claims of these patents." Already it has filed patent infringement
| suits against seven companies in three years and it threatened to sue a
| university for hosting a freely available HIV database. Perhaps most
| startling of all, that same university -- where much of the seminal research
| on expert systems took place -- entered into a licensing agreement intended
| to limit the use of the HIV database, which had been created by one of its
| own faculty.
`----
http://www.harmfulpatents.org/
Do Patents Kill? A Strange Twist in the Ramkumar vs Samsung Saga
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| A number of papers report that a death in Chennai could be connected with the
| ongoing Ramkumar vs Samsung (and others) patent litigation, a litigation that
| we have been tracking on this blog.
`----
http://spicyipindia.blogspot.com/2009/05/do-patents-kill-strange-twist-in.html
What use are research patents?
,----[ Quote ]
| In any case, I'm not buying David's assertion that "most universities", or
| most hospitals or research institutes for that matter, rely heavily on
| licensing income. And that being so, I am also somewhat skeptical about the
| number of researchers' families being supported by patents.
|
| What's the Open Science connection? Well, if you're interested in patenting
| the results of your research, there are a lot of restrictions on how you can
| disseminate your results. You can't keep an Open Notebook, or upload
| unprotected work to a preprint server or publicly-searchable repository, or
| even in many cases talk about the IP-related parts of your work at
| conferences. It seems from the data above that most universities would not be
| losing much if they gave up chasing patents entirely; nor would they be
| risking much future income, since so few seem to get significant funds from
| licensing.
`----
http://www.sennoma.net/main/archives/2009/06/what_use_are_research_patents.php
Time to rethink intellectual property laws?
,----[ Quote ]
| Conversely, there is widespread anecdotal evidence that the act created a
| mind-set among many researchers that their knowledge represents a potential
| goldmine not to be shared with potential competitors (i.e. those working in
| other universities) - at least until it has been protected by a patent
| application.
|
| Similarly, the act has led to a flood of “upstream” patents on basic
| scientific knowledge, leading to what some commentators describe as a
| virtually impenetrable “patent thicket” blocking small-scale inventors from
| marketing their products. For example, restrictive software patents limit
| further development and commercialisation in the field of information
| technology.
`----
http://www.onlineopinion.com.au/view.asp?article=8543&page=
Related:
Patents Over Patients
,----[ Quote ]
| Potential anticancer drugs should be judged on their scientific merit,
| not on their patentability.
`----
http://www.nytimes.com/2007/04/01/opinion/01moss.html?_r=1&oref=slogin
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