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Recent Posts
- September Changes to Estates Practice: Enduring Powers of Attorney and Representation Agreements
- Patent Assignment: Distinguishing Trolls from Legitimate Assignees, Part 2
- Patent Assignment: Distinguishing Trolls from Legitimate Assignees, Part 1
- Patent Assignment: Trolling the Gap between Potential and Actual Usefulness
- Privacy between Private Parties and the Disclosure of Information
- IP Litigation as a(n Illegal) Business Model
- Music for a Pound, or a Pound of Flesh?
- Lawyers and iPhones (and iPads) Shouldn’t Mix
- RoB Magazine declares victory on the Smartphone Plains of Abraham
- Research in Motion’s Opportunity to Promulgate Freedom
- Bill C-32: The Latest Attempt to Amend the Copyright Act
- Interpreting the NHL and the disallowed Sedin goal
- The Speciation of Web Sites
- Library Manifesto
- Technology (law) is everywhere!
- How to save a drowning business
- Information is the Good, the Currency, and the Era
- Opening the Scope of Employee Contribution
- On Virtual Travel
- Who carries your Web 2.0 banner?
Recent Comments
- Jeremy Costin's weblawg.net Patent Assignment: Distinguishing Trolls from Legitimate Assignees, Part 1 on Patent Assignment: Trolling the Gap between Potential and Actual Usefulness
- Ben Gornall on IP Litigation as a(n Illegal) Business Model
- Nimda Sys on Information is the Good, the Currency, and the Era
- Francina Kocaj on Information is the Good, the Currency, and the Era
- David T Michaels on IP Litigation as a(n Illegal) Business Model
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Category Archives: Intellectual Property
Patent Assignment: Distinguishing Trolls from Legitimate Assignees, Part 2
My colleague, Ben Gornall, Patent and Trademark Consultant, has continued our earlier discussion. My initial post was “IP Litigation as a(n Illegal) Business Model“, to which Ben commented here. I replied with “Patent Assignment: Trolling the Gap between Potential and … Continue reading
Patent Assignment: Distinguishing Trolls from Legitimate Assignees, Part 1
My colleague, Ben Gornall, Patent and Trademark Consultant, has continued our earlier discussion. My initial post was “IP Litigation as a(n Illegal) Business Model“, to which Ben commented here. I replied with “Patent Assignment: Trolling the Gap between Potential and … Continue reading
Patent Assignment: Trolling the Gap between Potential and Actual Usefulness
How many of the would-be defendants simply negotiate the licence – not a one-time settlement but an ongoing licence (perhaps under duress?) – to avoid the more costly lawsuit, even though they have no intention of using the patented matter any further?
Here we come to the difference between potential usefulness, which speculation underlies the granting of the patent, and actual usefulness, evidence of which underlies the infringement lawsuit. Continue reading
IP Litigation as a(n Illegal) Business Model
The difference between a law firm that makes its money by suing on behalf of it clients and a patent trolling business is this: A law firm is an association of professionals who represent injured parties; a patent troll acquires the right to injury and injury damages without having been injured. Continue reading
Posted in Business Law, Intellectual Property
Tagged ethics, Intellectual Property, patent troll
2 Comments
Music for a Pound, or a Pound of Flesh?
Music not shared is music not heard, and a band not shared basks only in obscurity. Gene Simmons regrets not having been more vigilant in his marshaling of the RIAA cavalry back in 2007. A fundamental question is how to monetize an industrialized art form without creating an artificial scarcity that undermines the cultural popularity on which that art form is dependent. Ars Technica has an article this week highlighting the competing views on how to monetize music in the absence of natural scarcity. Continue reading
Library Manifesto
the risk of common cultural property becoming the puppet, through digital means, of copyright holders rather than the protectorate of library gatekeepers Continue reading
Richard Stallman came to Vancouver, and I upset him
Richard Stallman was in Vancouver two weeks ago. He performed, if I may describe his lectures like that, three times; I caught the first. I asked Stallman a question after it was over, and thoroughly annoyed him. I know that I annoyed him because he grew flustered, stamped his feet, turned away from me to the rest of the crowd and yelled at me. Continue reading
What would you call open-source marketing?
Instead of tightening your grip on intellectual property (mostly trade-mark with a healthy dose of copyright and some neighbouring rights) and then hoping for royalties, the group doing the marketing attempts to engineer a type of personality cult for the brand. … What I’m talking about is tying differences (real or created) to cultural phenomena, and then grabbing hold of those phenomena and driving from that end; the product becomes a tag-along to those cultural memes. Continue reading
EU suggests reason and logic behind ACTA
According to the EU, ACTA will ignore “infringing goods [that] are not part of large scale traffic.” ACTA will also not force already taxed enforcement officers “to look for a couple of pirated songs on an i-Pod music player…” Continue reading
Posted in Civil Liberties, Information Technology, Intellectual Property
Tagged ACTA, Civil Liberties, copyfight, copyright, MPAA, RIAA
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