Aharonian sues for software patents

IP consultant and patent advocate extraordinaire Greg Aharonian has presented a lawsuit to attempt to get a court to determine that copyright doesn't protect software adequately and that patents are sufficient protection. Aharonian edits the popular and interesting site Patenting Art, and publishes an email newsletter. It is difficult to tell if this is just a ploy or if he is serious, but Technollama promises to find out. It seems evident that he is making his claim based solely in the American developments for software patents, while many other countries are happy with copyright protection.

New issue of SCRIPT-ed

The new issue of SCRIPT-ed is now online. This issue covers a good range of issues, including an analysis of the German case that has declared the validity of the GPL.

US Supreme Court readies P2P debate

This is where the great battle of our time will be fought. The P2P debate in the US Supreme Court is upon us, a case that will probably shape the near future of the legal validity of sharing networks.

But one must say that sharing will go on regardless of the ruling, BitTorrent is not under scrutiny here.

Costa Rican canopy tour patent troubles

Some local news from Costa Rica. The weirdest patent claim has made some of the news over here, after a Canadian patented and claimed the ownership of the "canopy tours", a great way to travel on the top of the rainforest to see the wildlife from close range. The problem is that we Costa Ricans have been using similar technologies for more than a century, which sort of invalidates any novelty claims. Besides, there is a dubious claim of patentability of business methods in Costa Rica. Now, the SALA IV (the Costa Rican constitutional court) has ruled that the patent was invalid.

Great news for canopy tour lovers.

Holidays

Sunny Costa Rica is great this time of year, so I will be heading down there for my holidays tomorrow. Updates will be few and far between.

Marvel sues City of Heroes

This is a great article by Fred von Lohmann about the surreal case of Marvel suing the makers of the popular "City of Heroes" MMORPG game. Marvel complains that City of Heroes is guilty of contributory infringement of copyright and trademark because some players in their site are creating characters that resemble Marvel heroes, such as Wolverine™, Hulk™ and Spider-man™. The argument is so ridiculous that it should not require any analysis. What is the damage to the brands if there are some gamers who also like Marvel comic characters and want to generate an avatar that resembles their hero? This is one of those cases in which abuse of IP serves only to provide bad PR for the company involved.

Marvel should not mess with comic-book geeks.

Digital trail

This is an excellent article by Regina Lynn about the dangers of Google and leaving a digital trail. We are increasingly leaving a digital footprint that tells people about our interests, opinions and tastes. People can Google and find some amazing details about who you really are. It makes one think what the world thinks of us, and everybody has googled themselves at one time or another.

Cheap Windows targets Asian markets

Reuters reports that Microsoft is targetting its cheap (sorry, "low cost") version of Windows XP to Asian markets. The stated purpose of this is to try to make Windows more appealing in emerging markets. The real reasons are: to hook home users into Windows, to try to stop the rampant piracy in Asia, and to try to redress the rise of Linux in that part of the world.

I pity the poor people who get this. If Windows XP is buggy (SP2 Anyone?), what will a cheap version look like?

Isn't wireless wonderful?

Technollama is coming to you today from the Playfair Library, where we are attending the very interesting conference named "Towards Utopia or Irreconcilable Tensions: the interface between intellectual property, competition and human rights". More reports later, but I am hoping to load the powerpoints from some of the talks later on.

Open Biotechnology

This is an interesting article in the excellent WorldChanging blog. The article looks at the possibility of using open source models in drugs and biotechnology. Although the article cites many of the possible uses for the technology, it fails to mention that the reason why this is still in "planning stages", or "gathering interest" and not in the licence drafting stage is that it is extremely difficult to translate the open source model into biotechnology.

The year of the blog

2004 has been the year of the blog. The BBC reports that the word "blog" has now been included in the Merriam-Webster dictionary. The definition reads: "BLOG noun [short for Weblog] (1999) : a Web site that contains an online personal journal with reflections, comments, and often hyperlinks provided by the writer."

Contrast that with Wikipedia's entry. I think that this is similar to the difference between the Encyclopedia Galactica and the Hitchhikers' Guide to the Galaxy on the subject of Pan-Galactic Gargle Blasters.

Digital divide in the U.S.

This is a rather good report in The Register that talks about the digital divide in the United States, where internet access is still the realm of the high-income white guy. The idea of the cosmopolitan world wide web is still a fantasy, as the average netizen tends to be American white guys.

All your code is belong to us

SCO's website has been defaced by hackers for two days running. The website's masthead was changed with a new banner that read "We own all your code - pay us all your money". SCO has become the favourite target of software programmers around the world after its case against IBM about the ownership of Unix code and seen as a direct attack of Linux. Darl McBride also earns the hatred of geekdom for his arrogant behaviour and dodgy facial hair.

The war against piracy

The movie industry keeps flexing their muscles to fight piracy. They have won a case against a website that charged its users to download music. Good for them! This serves to lend momentumn to their efforts to sue P2P users who download movies, which has been stopped in court recently.

Two stories relevant to music downloads

The Register brings two stories that are relevant to the music download debate. The first one is that music sales in the UK are still increasing, with growth in the last year of 2.1%. Wait a second! Aren't music downloads supposed to spell the death of music sales? Isn't it true that all of those evil downloaders have brought the music industry to their knees? Apparently not, what music downloading has done is bring CD prices down. The same report states that legal downloads are on the increase.

The other report states that Napster is now offering more than a million songs to their customers. These are amazing news for the industry, and seem to indicate that the music business can survive the existence of P2P networks.

Heirs of famous sculptor ask for royalties

This is sort of old (from last Tuesday), but I haven't seen it posted elsewhere. The heirs of the sculptor Paul Landowski, who is the author of the famous Christ the Redeemer statute in Rio de Janeiro, are asking for royalties from the admittance ticket sales into the attraction. This is a very interesting case because there is no doubt that sculptures are subject to copyright protection, but one would have to see if the author was hired by the Brazilian government to make the sculpture, hence it could be claimed that this is "work for hire" and whoever commissioned the sculpture owns the rights. This would also be interesting case because it would be analogous to artists claiming royalties from museum admittance fees.

Would all of those who have taken pictures of the statute infringing copyright? Am I infringing copyright for presenting an inline image from another site?

I have a headache now.

Hey, Lawyers, leave them kids alone!

Remember Pink Floyd's "Another Brick in the Wall"? Remember the chorus of kids singing "We don't need to education"? Now, those kids are asking for the royalties that they are due from the recording of those famous lyrics. EMI, Pink Floyd's record label, has declined to comment, but those kids may be due thousands of pounds.

Can I lay a claim for singing the tune in the shower for every day of my teenage years?
Didn't think so.

Open access debate in FT.com

This is an interesting exchange of ideas about open access journals between Matthew Cockerill, the editor of BioMed Central, and John Enderby, vice-president of the Royal Society. The centre of the debate is about the fact that publicly funded research is eventually made proprietary because the copyright is assigned to large publishers.

Publishers have been profiting from public research and the work of academics for too long.

Digital divide solutions... with Linux

Groklaw smugly reported this earlier. Steve Ballmer asked computer industry to create a computer worth $100 USD. A company called Solar PC has met the challenge with a small computer that runs Linux by using live CDs.

BTW, aren't Live CDs great? I have tested Knoppix and SUSE 9.2 recently. My wireless is still a bit dodgy though.

Authentication in Half-Life 2 works

The BBC reports that accounts in the popular game Half-Life 2 have been cancelled by the manufacturer. The developers were able to require authentication for the online part of the game, and have been able to shut them down.

I am not sure why they are so enthusiastic about it. I remember that authentication of multiplayer accounts was common as far back as Starcraft. Besides, it is evident that there will be a crack soon. Soon did I say? What about right now?