Anyone following the stock markets lately will easily agree with the need for new business models in the markets, given the financial incompetence and corruption that is currently destroying everything in its path. We need new business models, and now.
Just as importantly, such new business models should have the profits of such innovation go to only one group of people - the innovators, and not the parasites and dinosaurs who can buy off Congress, the PTO and the courts to try and prevent business method patents. I hope the CAFC
realizes the importance of new business models to help restore the U.S. economy, and that the CAFC realizes the need to fully protect such innovative models with patents, so that the innovators benefit from what the dinosaurs can't do. It is an opportunity for the CAFC to show some financial leadership in a town lacking the such in massive quantities.
In parallel, former Cisco CTO Judy Estrin has published a new book titled "Closing the Innovation Gap", reviewed in the New York Times, 9/1/8, page C4. "We have a national innovation deficit." The article summarizes:
"Yet she is deeply worried that Silicon Valley - and the United States
as a whole - no longer foster the kind of innovation necessary to develop
groundbreaking technologies and sustain economic growth."
All the more reason we need to eradicate the corruption and incompetence in the PTO, so that the investing marketplace can use higher quality issuing patents as signals as to where the real innovation is. Right now, the PTO is betraying the markets, which sadly seems to be the rule of the day in Washington.
Sunday, September 28, 2008
Saturday, September 27, 2008
EFF, Public Knowledge Sue US Government Over Secret IP Pact
the news comes from Grant Gross, IDG News Service:
http://www.pcworld.com/article/151213/suit_secret_treaty.html?tk=rss_news
Two digital rights advocacy groups have filed a lawsuit against the Office of the U.S. Trade Representative (USTR) in an attempt to get the office to turn over information about a secret international treaty being negotiated to step up cross-border enforcement of copyright and piracy laws.
The Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF) and Public Knowledge filed the lawsuit Wednesday after USTR ignored their repeated requests to turn over information about the proposed Anti-Counterfeiting Trade Agreement (ACTA).
ACTA could include an agreement for the U.S., Canada, the European Commission and other nations that are part of the talks to enforce each other's intellectual-property (IP) laws, with residents of each country subject to criminal charges when violating the IP laws of another country, according to a supposed ACTA discussion paper posted on Wikileaks.org in
May.
The document posted on Wikileaks also talks about increasing border searches in an effort to find counterfeit goods, encouraging ISPs (Internet service providers) to remove online material that infringes copyrights and increased cooperation in destroying infringing goods and the equipment used to make them. The full text of the ACTA has not been released, despite requests by EFF and Public Knowledge, as well as Canadian groups. Wikileaks is a site that posts anonymous submissions of sensitive documents.
"ACTA raises serious concerns for citizens' civil liberties and privacy rights," EFF international policy director Gwen Hinze said in a statement. "This treaty could potentially change the way your computer is searched at the border or spark new invasive monitoring from your ISP. People need to see the full text of ACTA now, so that they can evaluate its impact on their lives and express that opinion to their political leaders. Instead, the USTR is keeping us in the dark while talks go on behind closed doors."
Two digital rights advocacy groups have filed a lawsuit against the Office of the U.S. Trade Representative (USTR) in an attempt to get the office to turn over information about a secret international treaty being negotiated to step up cross-border enforcement of copyright and piracy laws.
The Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF) and Public Knowledge filed the lawsuit Wednesday after USTR ignored their repeated requests to turn over information about the proposed Anti-Counterfeiting Trade Agreement (ACTA).
ACTA could include an agreement for the U.S., Canada, the European Commission and other nations that are part of the talks to enforce each other's intellectual-property (IP) laws, with residents of each country subject to criminal charges when violating the IP laws of another country, according to a supposed ACTA discussion paper posted on Wikileaks.org in
May.
The document posted on Wikileaks also talks about increasing border searches in an effort to find counterfeit goods, encouraging ISPs (Internet service providers) to remove online material that infringes copyrights and increased cooperation in destroying infringing goods and the equipment used to make them. The full text of the ACTA has not been released, despite requests by EFF and Public Knowledge, as well as Canadian groups. Wikileaks is a site that posts anonymous submissions of sensitive documents.
"ACTA raises serious concerns for citizens' civil liberties and privacy rights," EFF international policy director Gwen Hinze said in a statement. "This treaty could potentially change the way your computer is searched at the border or spark new invasive monitoring from your ISP. People need to see the full text of ACTA now, so that they can evaluate its impact on their lives and express that opinion to their political leaders. Instead, the USTR is keeping us in the dark while talks go on behind closed doors."Obama may be worse for patent policy than MacCain
Unfortunately, Senator Obama is addressing the problem of patent reform, but in a negative way. Senator Obama, along with Senators Hatch and Leahy, were the primary sponsors of the Senate version of the Patent Reform Act that just went down to defeat in the Senate. So, if Obama is elected President, he will definitely sign this awful piece of legislation into law.
Practitioners whom I know have contacted Senator McCain, and they tell me that he is willing to listen to reason. Exactly what that means, I do not know.
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