Big Pharma: the reality

Posted on March 26, 2005 by jjn1

Those of us who campaign about the way our current Intellectual Property regimes are stifling innovation always hear one reflex response from politicians: “strong IP regimes are necessary because without them we would not have the miracle drugs on which modern medicine depends.” As with virtually everything else one hears from politicians on the subject of IP, this is an evidence-free proposition. Now an illuminating new book by the former Editor of the New England Journal of Medicine tells a different story. Here’s an excerpt from Aaron Schwartz’s succinct summary:

Our utopia of miracle pills is now beginning to look a bit like a nightmare. Drug companies use our tax money to pay for their research, turn around and sell the results to us at high prices, spend the resulting profits on massive campaigns to mislead us about their effects, which then encourage doctors to prescribe an expensive pill which may not help much and might even make things worse. Year after year, drug companies are by far the most successful industry. They use their stunning profits to buy off politicians and propagandize the public into maintaining this state of affairs. Only by learning the true state of affairs can we begin to fight back.

Music file-sharing: update

Posted on March 24, 2005 by jjn1

According to the latest Pew Internet survey, about 36 million Americans — or 27% of internet users — say they download either music or video files and about half of them have found ways outside of traditional peer-to-peer networks or paid online services to gather and swap their files.

The Project’s national survey of 1,421 adult Internet users conducted between January 13 and February 9, 2005 shows that 19% of current music and video downloaders, about 7 million adults, say they have downloaded files from someone else’s iPod or MP3 player. About 28%, or 10 million people, say they get music and video files via email and instant messages. There is some overlap between these two groups; 9% of downloaders say they have used both of these sources.

Software patents — the sordid reality (contd.)

Posted on March 20, 2005 by jjn1

Owen Barder’s Blog pointed me towards an instructive post in Groklaw. It concerns the pressure Microsoft allegedly applied to Denmark’s Prime Minister in order to soften his government’s opposition to the European Commission’s Directive on software patents. Groklaw runs this translation of an article in a Danish newspaper.

The founder of the world’s largest software company, Bill Gates, is now ready to shut down Navision in Denmark and move around 800 developers behind Denmark’s biggest software success to the US.

The Microsoft leader made that clear, when he meet with Prime Minister Anders Fogh Rasmussen, Economic and Business Minister Bendt Bendtsen and Science Minister Helge Sander in November.

The threat risks being executed if part of the IT business manages to block the disputed EU directive on patenting software, that Microsoft wants so dearly, but time and time again has been postponed thanks to efficient lobbying by anti-patent opposition.

“If I am to keep my development center in Denmark, I must have clarity on the rights issue. Otherwise I will move to the US, where I can protect my rights,” said Gates according to to Microsoft Chief Attorney Marianne Wier, who also attended the meeting with Anders Fogh Rasmussen.

If this is true, the results were mixed. On the one hand, the Danes did back off; on the other, staff in Microsoft’s Danish operation started to panic over the future (or otherwise) of their jobs. This prompted an emergency email to all staff from a senior Microsoft executive which (according to a leaked copy) reads:

Dear all,

You may have seen the front page article in Børsen today with the headline: Gates threatens to move Navision. The article outlines how the current EU disagreement over software patent protection endangers our development centre here in Vedbæk. Let me be very clear about this:

Microsoft has absolutely no plans to move the centre.

We are completely committed to Vedbæk and its current location.

The journalist has linked Microsoft’s known and outspoken attitude towards patent protection with some internal disagreements in EU regarding this software patent.

Microsoft is very much in favour of software patent protection – we believe this is the only way to ensure innovation and development of state-of-the-art software. Bill Gates has spoken of this numerous times in different situations. And yes, he has also made our opinion very clear to the Danish government. Let there be no doubt that Microsoft believes patent protection is necessary in order to protect our innovative work. We will continue to argue in favour of this but it is not the only aspect which we consider when investing in R&D.

If patents were the only thing determining where we locate our development sites then we would probably not have a site in China or in India.

I just wanted to briefly reassure you – you have absolutely nothing to worry about in terms of Vedbæk’s future. We are in dialogue with the journalist whom we hope to be able to present a more nuanced picture of the situation.

Don’t you just love the word “nuanced’! Note the clue that the boys in Redmond regard the Indians and the Chinese as a bunch of no-good pirates. And isn’t it interesting to learn that Microsoft intends to break the habits of a corporate lifetime and take up “innovation”?

Software patents — the reality

Posted on March 14, 2005 by jjn1

The New Zealand Herald

If you wondered how Bill Gates topped the Forbes rich list for the 11th year with a personal fortune of US$46.5 billion ($63 billion), look no further than the New Zealand Intellectual Property Office.

Patent 525484, accepted by the office and now open for objections until the end of May, says Microsoft invented and owns the process whereby a word-processing document stored in a single XML file may be manipulated by applications that understand XML.

It is one of a raft of patent applications Microsoft has dumped on the overworked staff of the office, and on patent offices worldwide.

Software patents in Europe

Posted on March 13, 2005 by jjn1

My Observer rant on this subject is here. I’ve suggested that people find out who their MEPs are and email them on the issue. I’ve also provided a suggested draft text in the hope that it will make it easier for readers to lobby.

More: Bill Thompson, who has written persuasively about software patents before, suggests using Write to Them, a lovely web service created by Tom Steinberg. All you need is to enter your postcode and the names of your public representatives are revealed.

Patently crackers

Posted on March 10, 2005 by jjn1

US Patent # 5,443,036

“A method for inducing cats to exercise consists of directing a beam of invisible light produced by a hand-held laser apparatus onto the floor or wall or other opaque surface in the vicinity of the cat, then moving the laser so as to cause the bright pattern of light to move in an irregular way fascinating to cats, and to any other animal with a chase instinct.”

But this pales into insignificance compared with another one Quentin pointed me at. It’s U.S. Patent # 4,022,227: “Method of concealing partial baldness.” It describes “a method of styling hair to cover partial baldness using only the hair on a person’s head. The hair styling requires dividing a person’s hair into three sections and carefully folding one section over another. “ A diagram may be helpful here:

Blogging in teaching

Posted on March 7, 2005 by jjn1

This semester, Ed Felten is teaching a course at Princeton on “Information technology and the Law”. He’s set up a student writing blog on which students post weekly essays on topics related to the course. Essays are 400-500 words in length, with due dates staggered through the week so that there are some new essays every day. I’ve just been reading some of the postings on the MGM v. Grokster case currently before the Supremes. Good stuff. It’s a low-key but useful illustration of how blogs can be used in teaching.

EU Council approves software patents

Posted on March 7, 2005 by jjn1

Despite being told by the European Parliament to think again, the EU Council of Ministers has adopted the software patent directive, in the face of requests from Denmark, Poland and Portugal to reject the directive. An EU Council representative said that the Computer Implemented Inventions Directive had been adopted but was unable to give more details. As it now stands, the directive would legalize software patents. This is Really Bad News because the only people really in favour of this are a number of very large and powerful software companies, including a noted abusive monopolist based in the US. The Directive now goes back to the Parliament. If you don’t know who your MEP is, now is the time to find out. This madness has to be stopped. Among other things, it could wipe out Open Source software. The European Parliament can stop it, but will only do so if its members understand the full implications of what is being proposed.

The nub of the MGM vs Grokster case

Posted on March 5, 2005 by jjn1

From the Amicus brief filed by Eben Moglen on behalf of the Free Software Movement and a group called ‘New Yorkers for Fair Use’.:

“At the heart of Petitioners’ argument is an arrogant and unreasonable claim — even if made to the legislature empowered to determine such a general issue of social policy — that the Internet must be designed for the convenience of their business model, and to the extent that its design reflects other concerns, the Internet should be illegal.” Eben is not a man to mince words and he’s gone right to the heart of it.

Profile of Ed Felten