COPYRIGHT TERM EXTENSION VIOLATE "PROGRESS" IN THE CONSTITUTION, OR DOESN'T IT?

Law professor Maria Pollack, whom I have criticized in the past for not understanding, science, engineering or patent law, HAS written an interesting article on how aspects of copyright law violate the "progress" clause of the Constitution. Her paper is titled "What is Congress supposed to promote? Defining 'progress' in Article I, Section 8, Clause 8, of the United States Constitution", and appeared recently in the Nebraska Law Review. Her conclusion:

This Article uses linguistic evidence to disprove a long standing assumption about the Progress Clause, which gives Congress "the power ... To Promote the Progress of Science and useful Arts by securing for limited times to Authors and Inventors the exclusive right to their respective writings and discoveries". The word "progress" is not a reference to the Enlightenment Idea of Progress and, thus, an anachronistic bias incapable of cabining Congress. The word "progress" means "spread". Congress does not have the power to create any intellectual property regime it thinks will increase the Gross National Product, campaign donations from holders of large copyright portfolios, or world harmonization. Any right to exclude others from use of writings and discoveries must promote the spread of knowledge and technology. This clarification of the constitutional language warrants court overthrow of both the circumvention limitations in the Digital Millenium Copyright Act and the twenty year subsidy provided copyright holders by the Copyright Term Extension Act.

Another lesson in writing claims

In patent claim language, comprises and includes mean the same. The use of comprises is acceptable between preamble and body of an independent claim. Further comprising is also OK in the independent claim.

In dependent claims, however, the language must use include and not comprising unless it uses further comprising.

In method claims (for ex. a. adding to database; b. associating data; c.parsing data groups), a, b, c do not imply order unless:

the claim language specifically mentions that "wherein step d is effected before step c"

or

the preamble of the claim leads into the body of the claim with comprising the steps, and not comprising steps.

PHARMACEUTICAL AD FOR ER-DYSFUNCTION FALSELY CLAIMS A PATENT

The August 25th San Francisco Chronicle, page A5, had an ad (one in many other newspapers, I suspect), from the BostonMedicalGroup.com for their proprietary process for treating performance dysfunction for those men for which the new pills don't work. One sentence caught my eye: "The secret to Boston Medical Group's success lies in The BMG Method, a proprietary treatment process for Urecktyle Dysfunction that recently received a U.S. patent. The group is the only physician network known to have acquired such a patent, ..." But what is the patent number? The ad doesn't mention it, I couldn't find it on the BMG Web site, nor could I find any patent assigned to Boston Medical Group, or two of its doctors mentioned in the ad - Barry Buffman and Alan Sperber. I am always suspicious of small companies touting patents in medical ads, because the existence of the patent means little medically, and it is all the more suspicious when it is so hard to find the actual patent.