Here’s the relevant purpose regarding copyright from our publication agreement:
1. I, ___________________, hereby represent and affirm that I am, or am authorized to act on behalf of, the copyright holder[s] of the Article, that I submit the Article for publication to the Forum, and grant the Forum a perpetual, world-wide, sublicensable, irrevocable, non-exclusive license to publish the Article electronically on the Forum, to reprint the Article or portions thereof in any medium now in existence or later invented, to cause the Article to be republished on electronic legal research services, including but not limited to LEXIS and Westlaw, to excerpt from the Article, to distribute, reproduce, transmit, and display the Article, to add hypertext links, graphics, images, and formatting to the Article, and to use the author’s name and likeness in promoting the Forum.
2. The Licensor retains the right to register, in the Licensor’s name, the Licensor’s copyright in the Article with the appropriate governmental office.
3. The Forum agrees to include in its publication of the Article, a notice of the Licensor’s copyright ownership. Notice will be in the form, “© YYYY [Licensor's name]. Published with permission of the copyright holder.” Upon the Licensor’s request said notice will also include a restriction on use by guests to the Forum.
4. This agreement does not require that the Forum be the first publisher of the Article.
5. If, after the Forum’s publication of the Article, the Licensor subsequently causes the Article to be published, the Licensor agrees where reasonable to include or have included in such publication an acknowledgment in the following format: “Reprinted from the Intellectual Property and Technology Forum at Boston College Law School, YYYY B.C. Intell. Prop. & Tech. F. MMDDXX.” and, if published in electronic format, a hypertext link to the Forum. (YYYY B.C. Intell. Prop. & Tech. F. MMDDXX. is the chronological citation assigned the article during publication on the Forum.)
I wonder if we should just instead consider incorporating a Creative Commons license–or option for other licensing if appropriate–within our license? Here’s Lawrence Lessig’s quick take on the whole copyright licensing of law journal articles.
Larry Sanger, one of the founders of Wikipedia, has launched a pilot site to rival Wikipedia: Citizendium:
The Citizendium (sit-ih-ZEN-dee-um), a “citizens’ compendium of everything,” is an experimental new wiki project. The project, started by a founder of Wikipedia, aims to improve on that model by adding “gentle expert oversight†and requiring contributors to use their real names.
Sounds look a good idea–but they’re late in the game, late on the meme. It just reminds me of so many examples in technology where “better” just doesn’t win. Mac lost to PC. Friendster lost to MySpace. Et cetera.
The beauty of Wikipedia is ease of participation–anyone can do it. But to use Citizendium, I *have* to register with my name and seek the approval of a “gentle” guide? I just don’t think they can achieve the growth that will drive it off the ground the same was as PCs and MySpace. Wikipedia wins because of its growth–I have a better chance of finding at least *something* there that I can’t find in an encyclopedia.
Maybe Citizendium should just grab all the Wikipedia content and use that as their base. It’s like using a public domain dictionary and adding all your new words to it or fixing the old definitions. That way, they have the size and content, and they can work at their slow growth rate to complete their content in quality.
I remember that Nupedia (the Wikipedia predecessor) had an editorial process involved–but they were just trying to streamline articles for releases. And they ditched this for the anti-editor process involved with Wikipedia.
I’m not a total nay-sayer. I think that CZ could become a valid rival. But it serves a different purpose than Wikipedia. Wikipedia is like having access to the “crowd”–like being able to talk to friends, friends of friends, etc.–whereas CZ will be more like being able to e-mail a professor who may have a response. With the former, I will probably get an answer, but I don’t know how correct, but if I ask enough I’ll probably get something close enough to correct. For the latter, I might not get a response, but I know the response will be right. This makes a great opportunity for a meta engine that searches CZ first and fills the gaps with Wikipedia.
See CZ’s thoughts on this Big Question on their blog.
Somewhat related to my last post (just minutes ago) on developing rule of law in post-conflict situations, I reflect upon a conversation I had after a rugby match between BC Law and Yale:
I was talking with a Yale graduate student in archeology about his work in the Mediterranean and Eastern Europe. From my own experiences in East Africa, I always wondered about how people go about and research ancient history in places so unexplored such as East Africa.
He basically confirmed my suspicions and said, “You just go into towns and talk to people and ask about their grandparents.”
And so I believe that in developing reforms such as rule of law (and especially IP-related law in terms of corporate investment) you really need to go in and figure out what’s been going on per a cultural basis–and that needs to happen not by asking theorists or by positing your own assumptions as to how things should be, but rather talking to the people and seeing what their thoughts are first.
In my experience, the thickest barrier between this type of anthropological and humanistic work and the work desired of the “development set” is that you have to get “down and dirty” with the culture. Unfortunately, many of the “development set” find it difficult to sit in a mud hut sitting on seasons of cow shit and work through the culture into understanding what has happened before their Nikes have touched the ground.
But to develop legal systems it takes time to figure out what has happened before–socially, culturally, and psychologically–for modern patterns and practices to take hold.
From Boing Boing, with a link to the actual patent application.
Here’s the abstract of the patent application:
Interestingness ranking of media objects
Media objects, such as images or soundtracks, may be ranked according to a new class of metrics known as “interestingness.” These rankings may be based at least in part on the quantity of user-entered metadata concerning the media object, the number of users who have assigned metadata to the media object, access patterns related to the media object, and/or a lapse of time related to the media object.
Boing Boing mentions that there may exist prior art in this area. The comment says: “
In Ethan Zuckerman’s blog: …My heart’s in Accra » A bitter fight brewing: Ethiopia and Starbucks clash over coffee:
Last year, the Ethiopian government filed trademark applications to protect the names “Sidaroâ€, “Harar†and “Yirgacheffe†– the hope was to prevent unscrupulous coffee dealers from buying inexpensive beans from other countries and selling them as “Sidaroâ€, whether or not they emerged from the region.
Unfortunately, the USPTO (US Patent and Trademark Office) rejected Ethiopia’s claims to these three names.
* * *
The absurdity of the situation, as I read it, is the need for a very poor nation to protect “intellectual property†they’ve owned for centuries in an expensive foreign market. The coffee situation makes me think of the notorious “turmeric patent“, where Indian scientists and attorneys had to present ancient Sanskrit manuscripts to overturn a US patent that introduced the “novel†use of turmeric for wound healing, a process used for thousands of years in India. The patent was overturned, but it’s a huge barrier for poor countries to have to litigate bogus patents in US court.
More controversy regarding indigenous property rights clashing with Western legal systems.
It’s Starbucks’ right to secure the patent in the U.S.–they applied for it first. Ethan is right that the problem is more with the USPTO than with Starbucks. There should, rather, be a certification system for marking beans from regions as being from those regions–this is being proposed now. This type of system is used already for apples and wines, among other products.
But can you trademark a name of a place? Could I trademark the name “France?” Have, for example, Native American tribes been able to protect use of their tribal names from being owned by products? The Crazy Horse malt liquor suit was settled. The case of some Native Americans suing the Washington Redskins for their trademark of their disparaging name is still alive. Pro-Football, Inc. v. Harjo, 415 F.3d 44, 46 (C.A.D.C. 2005).
Are we forced to extra-judicial resorts in resolving these types of issues? Everyone seems to be pushing for settlement and policy issues. Should the courts step in and take a stand?
One of the most potent areas for innovation has always been interoperability with existing inventions. As a small example, in the ‘80s some enterprising entrepreneur came up with a cup holder which could fit next to the driver’s seat in most cars.
Theoretically, such an invention benefits everyone. Consumers get an improved product: a car with a cupholder. The entrepreneur exploits a previously unoccupied market niche – creating new value. And, the owners of the existing technology, in this case, the car manufacturers, sell more cars because their product has been enhanced.
The owner of the already existing technology, however, is not always welcoming of interoperable products. Sometimes a manufacturer bundles a proprietary technology with a previously existing technology in order to control not one but two markets. In such a case, the manufacturer is not very happy when an enterprising inventor creates an interoperable technology – and jumps in on his or her game.
Let me give a famous example. In Lexmark Intern. v. Static Control Components, Lexmark, a computer printer manufacturer, designed its printers so that only Lexmark’s printer cartridges could be used with its printers. 387 F.3d 522 (6th Cir. 2004). Then, Lexmark sold the printer cartridges for high prices. In order to use a Lexmark printer, the consumer had to pay for one of Lexmark’s high-priced printer cartridges. In this way, Lexmark leveraged control of the printer market into control of the printer cartridge market.
Read more »
US Patent and Trademark Office made a new record for the number of software patents awarded in a single year. The agency has issued 893 new patents yesterday, pushing the total to 30,232 in this year.
if this is the trend for registration, more than 40,000 software patents will be issued more in this year, according to the Public Patent Foundation. The previous record was set in 2004.
The post brings up the NTP v. RIM case, where NTP, a patent-farm, sued the maker of the Blackberry for patent infringement. Even though RIM had the patents rejected upon reexamination, RIM eventually settled with NTP for $612.5 M. (NTP has not yet exhausted the appeals process on the USPTO patent reexamination decisions.)
Some followers saw this as a cry for the reexamination of the patent system as a whole, and the rejection of the NTP patents as a firming of the patent-gifting process. But maybe this recent news merely highlights the traditional pace of change in governmental bureaucracies: slow to none.
Hoo-ray.
I found this recently on Bill Heinze’s IP Updates Weekly:
In Amgen, Inc. v. Hoechst Marion Roussel, Inc. (August 8, 2006) the Federal Circuit disagreed with the district court’s construction of “therapeutically effective amount” in claim 1 of the patent …
According to Circuit Judge Schall:
Based on a reading of the claims in light of the specification, it appears that the patentee used the words “therapeutically effective” in order to broadly claim a pharmaceutical composition with a wide range of effects. Those effects do not necessarily include curing disease in humans. … the patentee noted that recombinant EPO, like that found in the claimed invention, “is the first therapeutic product which can be used to effectively treat hundreds of thousands of patients who suffer from anemia and other disorders involving low red blood cell counts.” In our view, this statement merely lists some of the uses of the invention, without restricting the scope of the invention. . . .
The dissenter wrote:
Significantly, I note that the words “therapeutically effective” are conventionally employed in the pharmaceutical arts to indicate that the claimed pharmaceutical product has utility in the treatment of a human disease where such treatment tends to cause the “healing” or “curing” of the disease.
He went on to say that the patent should reference the particular classes of patients for whom the drug would be “therapeutically effective.”
I agree with the majority here, to the extent that they define “therapeutically effective†as not necessarily including “curing.†In my experience in basic science research and its involvement in medicine, “therapeutically effective†generally describes an effect that can be contrasted with treatment with placebo – ie, the amount of the drug that has beneficial effects that proves to be significantly different from effects in patients treated with placebo (an inactive substance).
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“Traditional Knowledge, Genetic Resources, Folklore and Gender was the subject that attracted some 100 participants, mainly women from local indigenous and rural communities, to a two-day seminar held in October in RÃo Hato, Panama. They came to analyze their problems and successes as producers of traditional handicrafts; to learn which intellectual property (IP) tools could help them protect and market their products; and to benefit from the experiences of other indigenous communities in exploiting IP. With cheap imitations undermining sales of traditional handicrafts, the seminar, organized by WIPO in cooperation with the Industrial Property Registry of Panama and with financing from the Inter-American Development Bank, proved to be a timely event…”
Panama: Empowering Indigenous Women Through a Better Protection and Marketing of Handicrafts
Female empowerment remains an important goal around the world. Education is essential to this goal. Without knowledge of what feats are possible, and how to accomplish those feats, women remain unaware of their potential and without the tools to realize it.
This article reminded me of my personal experiences in western Turkey, where I lived for two years during my early teens while my father worked for NATO. My family came to appreciate Turkish art, including copper and gold pieces, scarves, and carpets. My mother began to collect the carpets as individual pieces of art, as one would paintings, with the goal to represent as many Turkish villages as possible in her collection. The key was that each village incorporated signature characteristics into their carpets, making the work unmistakably identifiable to connaisseurs, or even to young American amateurs like me. These characteristics include particular colors, such as the deep red in a carpet from Yagcibedir; shapes, such as the ubiquitous octagon in rugs from Kars; and knot size, like the very tight knots in Hereke rugs.
My family bought carpets through two very different means. First, we could visit one of our trusted (male) dealers in Izmir, and sip our fresh chi with sugar cubes served as carpet after carpet was tossed on the floor in front of us for our appraisal. While this method was undoubtably the most efficient, we did not realize the value of the carpets and the stories behind them until we learned that we could visit the villages where the carpets were made.
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Blogs, Copyright, Education, IP, Journal, Law School | paul | 
March 12, 2007 3:42 pm | 
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