Laws of Ideas

Just because it is GPL, it doesn't mean that you can't get in trouble!

2007-12-23T06:57:00.000-05:00

MPAA (Motion Picture Association of America) modifies a software under GPL license and then refused to release it to the public, a clear violation of the GPL license.

Boing Boing said the developer, Matthew Garrett, asked the MPAA several times to release the source code it used in building upon his work in creating the University Toolkit. GPL terms require such development to be released back to the open source community. Being a major lobbying force for wealthy studios, the MPAA likely did not regard such requests as ones they need to obey. Garrett followed up the non-response by feeding the MPAA a dose of its medicine - a DMCA take down request sent to its ISP.

An ISP can maintain its safe harbor status by quickly complying with DMCA notifications. Though this has been used controversially, in Garrett's case it worked as it was meant to do.

Brian Krebs at the Washington Post discussed the University Toolkit at length in November. He highlighted privacy concerns, but the copyright issue was not known at the time.

Empirical Evidence That Software Patents Stifle Innovation

2007-12-20T14:28:00.000-05:00

A few weeks ago, Slashdot pointed out that a Critic of Software Patents Wins [the] Nobel Prize in Economics.
The paper that Slashdot referred to is : Sequential Innovation, Patents, and Imitation by James Bessen and Eric Maskin (the aforementioned Nobel Prize winner.) The paper was written in 1999 and is an MIT Economics Department Working Paper #00-01 (one of first working papers to be published at MIT in 2000.)
To read more on James Bessen work on software patents, you can go to "Research on Innovation" website.

EU Patnets Simplified

2007-12-15T15:40:00.000-05:00

The revised European Patent Convention took effect this week, bringing in a system designed to substantially simplify patent issues for businesses, according to the European Patent Office.

The updated Patent Convention has been 10 years in the making, and updates the original 1973 agreement with more flexibility, more legal certainty, simpler procedures and reduced costs, the European Patent Office (EPO) said.

The new patent convention may accelerate changes to the legal environment around IT patents, as one of its provisions simplifies further revisions to Europe's patent framework. Revisions can now be effected through decisions by the EPO's Administrative Council, something that previously required diplomatic conferences between member states.

Intellectual Property, Copyright Infringement in China

2007-12-04T12:27:00.000-05:00

China’s Computer Software Copyright Regulations hold that providing revised software without the express agreement of the copyright owner may cause the provider to be civilly — or criminally — liable. There are few Chinese laws or regulations specifically governing add-ons, although add-ons to online games have been prohibited since 2003. As for whether an add-on application constitutes software piracy, Mr. You says it defies definition.“Intellectual-property protection in China is still complex at this stage,” he says.

SCABR.COM has an interesting article about a Chinese instructor who has been found guilty for Copyright Infringement for writing a small Add-on patch that modifies a popular Instant Messaging program in China.

Making Money by Fighting Software Piracy

2007-11-26T09:06:00.000-05:00

I read this article from Brian Bergstein in Yahoo Finance about how BSA is making tons of money by targeting small business for Copyright violations and Software Piracy.

The funny thing is that they are suing small business who can't actually prove (by means of providing their receipts) that they legally bought a copy of software they are using!!! DO we keep the receipts for everything that we buy?!

What BSA is doing is completely legal, i.e. enforcing software protection; but the fact of the matter that they are going after small business who don't have enough financial or human resources to fight BSA and probably will settle by paying fines, makes it really ugly!

BAN PIRACY in Audio Software

2007-11-24T12:38:00.000-05:00

I came across a website called BanPiracy.com. It looks like a legal consulting company specialized in Audio Software Protection. The company's website is very unorganized and does not really provide any information about what kind of services they provide to their clients.
It's interesting to have a company devoted to a very narrow field of IP protection and dealing exclusively with Audio Software industry. The problem might be that they only have one client!

On November 21, 2007 a message was posted on the popular SONICSTATE.COM forum from the CEO of BanPiracy, criticizing the Audio Software developers for not caring enough about their legal rights and getting on board to fight the audio software piracy. In his post, Michael David is also replying to some of the harsh criticisms pointing to his company.

The fact is that stopping software piracy is and should be a multidimensional and international effort. Despite the fact that United States has one of strongest copyright protection laws, pirated software can be found everywhere; from the basement of a self-claimed hacker to the research labs of university students and in case of Audio Software, even in the most prestigious Audio Production studios.
Installing cracked software on a computer is nothing but stealing somebody else's property and using it for free, but enforcing software protection will not work without educating students, developers and even illegal users of the consequences of their action.

I have seen many students, even in my own class!, using cracked software for many different reasons. In one of my classes I asked them what was their reason the last time they used or installed an illegal software. They were mostly sophomore kids and quite interestingly it was a multimedia production class so there was a very good chance that most of them had cracked software at home or on their laptops. Their answers were fun to read:

software is expensive
I don't want to come to the lab to do my projects everyday and I don't have the money to buy it!
I am not profiting from this! it is just for a school project!
I think the price is really unfair! I would buy it if I thought it is worth it!
I hate ***** company and I am not paying them a dime!
Software should be free and open source!
Students should not pay to learn how to use a software, we will get used to it and later the company will make more money from us! because we are using their software after school

Kids have all sorts of excuses. Some even go one step further and promote the piracy by sharing it with their friends and making fun of those who actually pay for their software.

A successful Anti Piracy campaign, in my ideas,should start with students, educating them about the production costs, expenses, international competition, Intellectual Property laws so that when they get to high school and later in college that have at least some answers for their excuses!

Gowers Review of Intellectual Property in UK, Raid over businesses in UK!

2007-11-21T10:12:00.000-05:00

In December 2005, the Chancellor of the Exchequer asked Andrew Gowers to conduct an independent review into the UK Intellectual Property Framework. The Review was published on 6th December 2006 and can be accessed here.

The Review sets out a number of targeted, practical recommendations to deliver a robust Intellectual Property framework fit for the digital age. One of these recommendations is to enable authorities to raid businesses suspected of using unlicensed software without needing warrants. John Lovelock, director general of the Federation against Software Theft, said that they have been lobbying for the reforms for 13 years. You can here more about this story here.

Coptright is all you need! but Is it really?

2007-11-12T10:03:00.000-05:00

In an article written in New York Times yesterday, "A Patent Lie", Timothy Lee argues that Copyright by itself is essential for protecting software companies that are actually involved in creating new technological breakthroughs. In his idea, Patents are not only expensive and burdensome, they are stifling software innovation since huge companies have stockpiles of patents of even most obvious techniques and use them as a bargain in litigation against small start-up software shops.

But the question is: "Is Copyright protection really enough to protect software companies in the today's fierce market?"

Four small software companies in UK are claiming that it is not and they are challenging the UK-IPO guidelines in a high court. In the UK-IPO hearing, the companies argued that the new policy means that they cannot use patent law to stop someone from producing and selling programs in the UK for use abroad, because that would not qualify under the 'contributory infringement' provision of the Patents Act.

Intellectual Property Organization in IRAN

2007-10-17T09:54:00.000-04:00

"An Iranian Intellectual Property Organization will be established by the combination of offices, departments and committees that work on intellectual property. [this organization] will be effective to achieve objectives of Article (139) of the 4th economic development Act."

Iranian Parliament (MAJLIS) asked for establishing this organization after 82 years of law making in intellectual property in Iran. The announcement comes in a time that Iran is among the worst countries regarding it's protecting intellectual property legislation and enforcement.

IP crisis has been mentioned in the parliament before. Iran has not joined the international Intellectual Property conventions and many believe that country's refusal to join the international community in protecting intellectual property has to do with Iran's membership in the World Trade Organization (WTO) which has been vetoed by US in the past.

Even if that's true, Iran can loose millions of dollars of foreign investment due to the lack of legal protection for Intellectual Property.

If US agrees to let Iran join the WTO and Iran agrees to halt it's nuclear program, it would be great opportunity for Iran to move it's IP program forward.

Linux Lawsuit

2007-10-13T12:16:00.000-04:00

Two of the major Linux distributors have been sued with a Patent Infringement Lawsuit. A company called IP Innovation in Texas has sued Redhat and NOVELL for infringing US patent No. 5,072,412 titled: " User Interface With Multiple Workspaces for Sharing Display System Objects".
IP Innovation filed another suit earlier this year accusing APPLE of infringing the very same patent.

Although this created a huge fuss and intense discussion among Linux users, it doesn't look like Linux and Open source fans are afraid of the outcome. Friday, the non-profit Linux advocacy group The Linux Foundation released this statement:

"Novell and Red Hat will respond to this claim with the same energy and effectiveness as we saw Novell and IBM bring in their response to the allegations made by SCO. As in SCO, we have confidence that in the end the court will reach a just and right result.

This case will aid those of us who are advocating the cause of patent reform by demonstrating the wasteful drain that the current process imposes on innovative activities. We are committed to continuing our vigorous support for meaningful amendment of the software patent laws."

Group Patnet Examination on Wiki

2007-09-14T12:17:00.001-04:00

The idea is simple and yet with great potential:

Publish a patent application on Wiki and while the patent is pending and during the patent process, let outsiders contribute and wight in [in the same way that Wikipedia does]. The result is a huge amount of information from users all over the world regarding the prior state of the art and whether or not the pending patent technology is already in use.

The idea which was first brought up by the New York Law school professor Beth Noveck and has been supported by USPTO and companies such as IBM, can make a great difference in the quality of technical patents.

The proposed project also enables users to rank other submissions (similar to eBay and Amazon). There are also other issues that have to taken into account. For example submission of sabotaging material by a competitor regarding a pending patent should be prohibited.

Sponsors such as IBM and HP will provide the pilot test run of the project with about 400 patent applications.

The PEERtoPATENT project is now live and accessible from http://www.peertopatent.org/

Patent infringement for Blackberry

2007-09-11T10:49:00.000-04:00

If you own a blackberry there is a good chance you will not be able to use your email and Internet service in the near future.
"A company called NTP is asking for the court to enforce an injunction which would prohibit the sale of BlackBerries in the United States, and would also shut down email to all users except for US government account holders. Ironically, this would mean that the US Patent and Trademark Office and the federal judges hearing this case would continue to have email access while ruling on whether that privilege would be granted to the rest of us mere mortals. Since a three judge panel of the US Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit in Washington already ruled that RIM, makers of the BlackBerry, was in violation of seven of NTP's patents, things don't look very good for BlackBerry users at this point, especially if the USPTO upholds the validity of the patents in question."

NTP has claimed that the Blackberry infringes on 8 of its patents, five of which are currently being re-examined by the US Patent and Trademark Office for validity. The USPTO may rule that the patents are valid and enforceable, or they may rule that these patents are invalid, making it possible for RIM to likely continue with making and selling the Blackberry, and businesspeople everywhere will breathe a sigh of relief.

NTP is not a technical company! NTP buys patents relating to wireless email technology. The questioned patents in this case have to do with normal email activities of everyday users. The only difference is that they have used Radio Frequencies. If the patents are uphold by USPTO, many people around the world could loose their mail service!

Mikki Barry is an intellectual property attorney in Great Falls, Virginia. She has been commenting on Internet legal issues and policies since 1984. To contact Mikki, please visit http://www.mikkibarry.com

Patent Caddie! An application to help draft Patents!

2007-09-11T10:27:00.000-04:00

An IP service company in new Delhi India (Verist) is about to release a software application which helps IP attorneys and practitioners prepare and process useful and efficient Patent applications.
"Patent Caddie™ is designed to assist Patent Professionals and Inventors with drafting professional quality and professional looking patent applications through a software application that uses an easy Question & Answer based format coupled with an intuitive Backend processing system (patent pending)."

Eastern Discrict of TEXAS

2007-09-06T11:41:00.000-04:00

what is so special about the eastern district of TEXAS? As I keep reading about the software patent law suits, more and more of these law suits have been filed in this jurisdiction. Anyone knows why?

Another question is about the origin state of the top IT companies. Why are most of the top companies from Delaware? If you read the law suits most of the companies have been identified as a Delaware company with their main location of business and headquarters in California! Why? Anything special about registering your business in Delaware?

Email Auto Reply has a PATENT!!!

2007-09-06T10:32:00.000-04:00

Can you believe this? Automatic response to incoming emails based on some really preliminarily logic rules is patented!!!!

I have at least 20 rules defined in my Outlook to classify and respond to emails!!! Has Microsoft or any other programmer who writes an email client paid them royalties? I don't think so!

For those of you who are familiar with rule-based systems; just read the description of the patent. If this idea is patentable then every student project done in a rule-based AI class should be considered for a patent application!

Polaris IP has filed a patent infringement law suit against the following companies based on this patent: AOL, Amazon(AMZN), Borders, Google(GOOG), IAC, and Yahoo(YHOO).

Notes: Full text of the law suit filed by Polaris IP (Filed on August 27, 2007)

NetAPP v. SUN

2007-09-05T22:08:00.000-04:00

I was looking for a real patent infringement case to see how IP attorneys are litigating each other when it comes to technical computer science material.

NetAPP has files an IP Lawsuit against SUN regarding several patent infringement. First of all NetAPP is denying SUN's allegations stating that NetAPP is infringing any of SUN's patents. Second, NetAPP is suing SUN for using their file technology in their ZFS file system.

What makes this lawsuit even more interesting (or not!! for open source advocates) is that SUN is distributing ZFS under open source license.

If you are interested to see a real patent lawsuit filed in a US District court, this is a good real life example. It is even more interesting for computer scientists when attorneys are trying to explain a very technical concept such as consistent-file-systems in a pleading.

Another interesting fact is that NetAPP filed this lawsuit only after they received correspondence from SUN's attorneys claiming that NetAPP is infringing SUN's patents! One would ask if NetAPP was aware of the fact that SUN was infringing some of their patent why did they wait to file the lawsuit until they themselves were accused of infringement?

anyone knows what happened to the law suit?

A Patent for Linked Lists!

2007-09-05T14:55:00.000-04:00

This is really funny! (If you don't want to call it stupid or even ridiculous!)

There is a patent for bidirectional linked lists! Does this mean that any programmer who wants to use a doubly linked list should get permissions!? Or any code that is using LinkedList class in java is a potential patent infringer? That is exactly when the problem with software patents makes itself very clear.
I really like to know what was the patent examiner thinking when he/she approved this application:

"A computerized list is provided with auxiliary pointers for traversing the list in different sequences. One or more auxiliary pointers enable a fast, sequential traversal of the list with a minimum of computational time. Such lists may be used in any application where lists may be reordered for various purposes."

This is one of the most fundamental concepts in Data Structures! I have personally thought this in all of my labs! Should I ask all of my students to stop using doubly linked lists?!

The idea even sounds stupid!!!! That's really not IP protection should be about. I am sure these guys are not the first people who used a bidirectional ( even multi directional ) linked list!!

Unlock your iPhone!!

2007-08-25T16:00:00.000-04:00

Do you think APPLE should be punished for cutting a deal with AT&T for exculsive iPhone sell? Are you a mac person in heart but think Steve Jobs betray you this time? :)

Well if you think you paid 500$ for a phone and you should be entitled to use it with any carrier then you can follow these 9 step instructions here and unlock your iPhone !!!!

WARNING!!! this might violate your warranty, and you might very well damage your phone since there are some soldering and technical steps involved. Use it at your own risk!!

IRAN in WIPO

2007-08-23T13:05:00.000-04:00

I had published this post on my personal weblog as well, I thought I should add it here:

WIPO has published a report on the Patent Applications world wide. Japan is the leading country when it comes to filing for Patents and number of Patents in force.

A quick search in this report reveals a sad reality; Iran has only 10 Patents in force!!!!! compare that with more than one million Patents in force for Japan. It is true that this is not a good measure for the state of research and development in Iran - since Intellectual Property enforcement has long been a hugely neglected area in Iran - but still shows an unbelievable gap between us and other countries.

One might ask: what happens to tons of research and patent applications submitted by Iranian students and researchers who are very active outside of Iran? well unfortunately the credit goes to the country of their residence and unless they submit it directly to WIPO as an Iranian inventor, other countries will benefit from their invention!! what a shame!

Dont Copy Illegal Software!

2007-08-23T11:30:00.000-04:00

At least don't sell it online! or you will get something like this! Many students - even in US - are using illegal copies of software. Some think that those who use it only for educational purposes (mainly college students) should not pay for using softwares. In a way it make sense to get them to use a specific software so that after graduation they continue using it and buy a licensed copy.

Google's Patent

2007-08-23T11:26:00.001-04:00

Another article about the Google's Search Patent application:

United States Patent Application: 0050071741

Enjoy!

Bruce Perens and Problem of Software Patents in Stansdards

2007-08-15T14:56:00.000-04:00

An article from Bruce Perens from Cyber Security Policy Research Institute, George Washington University on Problem of Software Patents in Standards.
If you are interested to join an online discussion of this article you can go here.

Google Searching Algorithm Patent

2007-08-15T14:42:00.000-04:00

On December 31, 2003 Google submitted a patent application to the US Patent office to protect his searching algorithm. When the application got posted online, many started using it as a guidance to how promote their website in the Google search engine.

You can see a lot of discussions on the forums regarding this particular and important patent application here.

Notes:

This is another article regarding the same patent. (Source: SEOmoz)

Intellectual Property in Middle East

2007-08-15T14:35:00.000-04:00

This is another quick comparison of the Intellectual Property Laws in most of the countries in the Middle East. Again IRAN is missing!

Source: bustpatents.com

US helping to protect Intellectual Property in Middle East

2007-08-15T14:28:00.000-04:00

US-Middle East Free Trade Area
Fact Sheet: US-Middle East Free Trade Area (MEFTA)

"Across the globe, free markets and trade have helped defeat poverty, and taught men and women the habits of liberty. So I propose the establishment of a U.S.-Middle East free trade area within a decade, to bring the Middle East into an expanding circle of opportunity, to provide hope for the people who live in that region."

President Bush
May 9, 2003
Columbia, S.C.

The President's Vision of Free Trade in the Middle East

To re-ignite economic growth and expand opportunity in the Middle East, the President, in May 2003, set out his vision of establishing a U.S.-Middle East Free Trade Area (MEFTA) by 2013. The MEFTA's focus is to work with countries in the Middle East in graduated steps to increase trade and investment with the United States and the world economy, and to assist these countries in implementing domestic reforms, instituting the rule of law, protecting private property rights (including intellectual property), and creating a foundation for openness, economic growth, and prosperity.

"A soft introduction to software Patent" (Balthazar)

2007-08-15T14:23:00.000-04:00

This is a post from Balthazar about software patents. Unfortunately he doesn't give us any reference for the statistics and cases that are mentioned here but still its just a soft intro!

Tehran Avenue and IP in IRAN

2007-08-15T14:15:00.000-04:00

Tehran Avenue (www.tehranavenue.com) has couple of articles about intellectual property in IRAN. IP enforcement in IRAN is not as horrible as in some south east Asian countries but still is way behind the current standards.

On Intellectual Property
Intellectual Rights in the Laws of IRAN

Are computer algorithms copyrightable?

2007-08-13T16:37:00.000-04:00

So let's get right into it:"Are computer algorithms copyrightable"?

United States copyright office says:

"Definition

A “computer program” is a set of statements or instructions to be used directly or indirectly in a computer in order to bring about a certain result.

Extent of Copyright Protection

Copyright protection extends to all the copyrightable expression embodied in the computer program. Copyright protection is not available for ideas, program logic, algorithms, systems, methods, concepts, or layouts."

Well, it is not as clear as it looks like here. One might think that the above definition clearly states that algorithms can not be protected with copyright laws. Copyright is suppose to protect the expression of an idea, not the idea itself. The question then becomes: What is a computer algorithm written in pseudo code? an idea or an expression of an idea? If a programmer translates a computer algorithm from pseudo code into Java, is she violating any law? what is a translator translate a book from English into Spanish? latter is clearly a copyright infringement if it has been done without permission from the author. But it is not really clear in the case of an algorithm.

First Post

2007-08-13T15:12:00.000-04:00

As a doctoral student in computer science I became interested in Intellectual Property specially The Laws Of Ideas that deal with algorithms and software.

How I got interested goes back to a discussion with my advisor during my doctoral research. I was wondering whether or not by using somebody else's algorithm I was violating any laws. The fact that doctoral research should be original and significant is a total different story. I was trying to use somebody else's algorithm to develop another system; now for the purpose of the doctoral research I was ok by citing the original author and making sure that his algorithm is not at the heart of my research and therefore is not affecting my work. But the question was still very valid!

In fact it is still very valid! there are too many opposing ideas when it comes to protecting an algorithm by IP laws.

well thats just how it all started, I kept digging more and more ....