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UK Government Fails to Get Web 2.0
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| In fact reading the full report is even more depressing, since it constantly
| harps on "stakeholders" - by which it means content owners - and clearly
| doesn't give a toss for the general public's concerns or needs.
|
| The UK government is clearly still trapped in the mindset that it's about
| telling the little people what they can do with the stuff kindly provided by
| those magnanimous content corporations.
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http://opendotdotdot.blogspot.com/2009/03/uk-government-fails-to-get-web-20.html
UK opposes copyright exemptions for mash-ups
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| There should be no new exemption from copyright law for users' adaptations of
| copyright-protected content, the UK Government has said. To create such an
| exemption for user-generated content would ignore the rights of content
| creators, it said.
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http://www.theregister.co.uk/2009/03/03/mashup_copyright/
Recent:
Obama Victory Draws Quick Reactions From IP, Tech Communities
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| The intellectual property community has been quick to begin the anticipation
| of a Barack Obama presidency in the United States following his election on
| Tuesday.
|
| [...]
|
| “Obama’s regime is more likely to take the feedback from civil society into
| consideration and similarly more sceptical towards the pure business
| interests presented by Big Pharma, etcetera,” he said. “In the end, much will
| depend on what kind of persons Obama chooses to his cabinet for the key
| positions pertaining IP policy and global trade.”
|
| Andrew Updegrove, an attorney at technology law firm Gesmer Updegrove in
| Boston who runs the open-standards blog consortiuminfo.org, said
| administration changes have little effect on US technical standards policy,
| since this sector is largely driven by industry - not government.
|
| But when it comes to international IP treaties, “this is where things could
| get more interesting,” he said, “with the Obama administration being possibly
| more willing to listen to a diversity of voices on matters such as open
| source - as are many other governments throughout the world.”
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http://www.ip-watch.org/weblog/index.php?p=1303
Bursting the proprietary-software bubble
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| Free software acknowledges that truth. Proprietary software does not.
| Instead, like the banks, proprietary-software vendors have had to justify the
| cost of their wares by constructing complex arguments about value.
|
| Again, lipstick terms such as 'software patents' and 'intellectual property'
| have been applied so successfully they have entered the vernacular. Yet even
| a cursory examination of their real meaning shows them to be spurious. They
| exist only to perpetuate the dominance of monopolists.
|
| Yes, we are living in a proprietary-software bubble and, like the bursting of
| the easy-credit bubble, this one is about to burst too — it's a matter of
| survival.
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http://resources.zdnet.co.uk/articles/comment/0,1000002985,39541519,00.htm
Bilski: Be prepared for huge lobbying in Congress?
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| The outcome of the Bilski case, which should be published in October, might
| invalidate software patents in the United States:
|
| Plager said he regretted the unintended consequences of the decisions in
| State Street Bank and AT&T. Those rulings led to a flood of applications
| for software and business method patents, he noted. If we “rethink the
| breadth of patentable subject matter,” he said, we should ask whether
| these categories should be excluded from patent protection.
|
| If the CAFC are clever enough to follow the Supreme Court and kick software
| patents out, you might see the desperate large corporations and their patent
| department rushing to Congress. Especially if tomorrow the banks value their
| patent portfolio as void, and not useful to get any credit.
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http://stopsoftwarepatents.org/forum/t-95558/bilski:be-prepared-for-huge-lobbying-in-congress
Latha Jishnu: The mouse that bit Microsoft
PATENTLY ABSURD
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| Here’s what Gates wrote in an office memorandum in 1991. “If people had
| understood how patents would be granted when most of today’s ideas were
| invented, and had taken out patents, the industry would be at a complete
| standstill today. . . I feel certain that some large company will patent some
| obvious thing related to interface, object orientation, algorithm,
| application extension or other crucial technique.”
|
| This was the year after Microsoft launched Windows 3.0, the first of its new
| operating systems that would become hugely popular across the world. Yet,
| three years down the line, Microsoft had changed from a kitten that was
| content with copyright protection to an aggressive patents tiger. In 1991,
| Microsoft had filed fewer than 50 patent applications whereas last year it
| was awarded 1,637 patents, almost a 12 per cent increase in the number of
| patents it received in 2006. According to IFI Patent Intelligence, the rise
| in Microsoft’s patents portfolio bucked the general trend in 2007 when the
| number of patents issued by the US Patents and Trademark Office dipped by 10
| per cent. Apparently several thousand of the company’s filings are still
| pending.
|
| All this may prompt the reader to conclude that there is indeed a direct
| correlation between IPR and growth — and wealth — as the company claims. Not
| true, says Mark H Webbink, a US Supreme Court lawyer who is a recognised
| voice on IT issues. Charting the company’s revenues, R&D spending and patent
| filings from 1985 onwards, he shows that the spike in patent filings occurred
| long after the Microsoft “had become well established and was being
| investigated for its monopolistic practices”. Webbink contends that patents
| did not spur the launch and rapid growth of the mass market software
| industry. On the other hand, patents have become a threat to software
| innovation, he warns.
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http://www.business-standard.com/india/storypage.php?autono=330566
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