Free Talk Live

“The basic problem with patents is that you’re trying to assign property rights to something that doesn’t deserve property rights. The fact that these property rights end up in the hands of financial owners as opposed to the original inventors just exacerbates the problem. The basic problem is that Chris [Dixon] and a bunch of engineers can be sitting at Hunch designing some amazing new feature and somebody unbeknownst to them has a patent on this feature and never actually implemented it and can now screw them over… It’s just not right, it shouldn’t exist.”

"Dizzying but invisible depth" - an article on the complexity of technology, why the patent system is broken, and, indirectly, a demonstration of why central planning cannot be effective in complex settings.

The Supreme Court unanimously ruled on Tuesday that medical tests that rely on correlations between drug dosages and treatment are not eligible for patent protection. Writing for the court, Justice Stephen G. Breyer said natural laws may not be patented standing alone or in connection with processes that involve “well-understood, routine, conventional activity.”

The problems plaguing America's intellectual property system.

Headline says it all! Expect more as copyright crackdown pits everyone against everyone else.

Oh, and for those of you who are interested, the Feds are offering their cannabinoid patent for licensing. Let's see how long it takes to get picked up.

It has become fashionable to toss copyright, patents, and trademarks—three separate and different entities involving three separate and different sets of laws—plus a dozen other laws into one pot and call it “intellectual property”. The distorting and confusing term did not become common by accident. Companies that gain from the confusion promoted it. The clearest way out of the confusion is to reject the term entirely.

Last week, one of the 14,000 defendants in the US Copyright Group's anti-P2P litigation campaign filed a document with the DC District Court, hoping to quash the subpoena that would reveal his name and address. The letter was sent anonymously, identifying itself only with an IP address. The case concerned a small film called The Steam Experiment, but the anonymous Doe insisted to the court that "he has never used a file-sharing service and does not know what this case is about."

A patent for next-generation handcuffs offers a future in which the detained can be zapped directly from their restraints, and even injected with a medication, sedative, irritant, paralytic, or other fine substance.