Tuesday, May 02, 2006

Supreme Court's Surprising Interest In Patent Law. While Congress is looking at various bad ideas to make the patent system even worse than it is today, it appears that the Supreme Court may be taking an interest in shaping the future of the patent system in the US as well. Some are noting how odd it is that the Supreme Court is looking at three different patent cases -- all of which may have dramatic effects on the system. The Supreme Court doesn't take many patent cases, so the fact that they're looking at three suggests the court is suddenly much more interested in patent-related issues. Whether or not that's a good thing, remains to be seen. The first two cases mentioned, we've already discussed. They involve the eBay-MercExchange battle over granting injunctions and the Metabolite case about whether or not someone can get a patent on the correlation between an amino acid and a vitamin -- i.e., something found in nature. The final case is the MedImmune case, and will determine whether or not it's okay for a company to challenge the validity of a patent after the company has already licensed the patent. The lower court said that MedImmune couldn't sue, because if it felt the patent was invalid, it never should have licensed it in the first place. This is problematic, because many companies will end up licensing patents simply to avoid the uncertainty involved in a long lawsuit. In fact, that's a big part of why RIM finally settled with NTP -- despite plenty of evidence that NTP's patents were invalid. While each of these decisions may impact patent law in some significant ways, it's still a drop in the bucket compared to what Congress could, but won't, do in improving the way the country tries to set up incentives for innovation. [unmediated] 6:30:29 PM    comment []

The other May Day march -- in Iran. Regime Change Iran has a roundup of International Worker's Day's demonstrations in Iran, which turned out to be quite a show of anger against the regime. [Pajamas Media] 10:14:07 AM    comment []

Creating Our Own Peer-to-Peer Expertise-Finder. The terms for expertise should be folksonomic, not taxonomic: People can define their own expertise Voting on others' expertise should be simple Your votes would sit and be maintained on your own hard drive Different expertise 'scores' are needed for different purposes We need to be able to filter and analyze expertise assessments in many ways We should leave the tabulations to those who do them best [How to Save the World] 10:13:45 AM    comment []

The Clash on Fridays, 1980. Mark Frauenfelder: I remember seeing this in 1980, in my friend's dorm room. It was thrilling to see my favorite band for the first time. Before that, I was pretty much limited to the pictures of The Clash that appeared in Creem and Trouser Press. Bedazzled has the video. Link Classic multi-ending MAD flexidisc MP3s. Cory Doctorow:  Wade sez, "The Scar Stuff blog has posted a link to fan-created mp3s of all eight versions of the 1979 MAD Magazine song 'It's A Super-Spectacular Day'. The song came on a flexi-disk stapled into the magazine. The disk had multiple grooves so you'd hear a different version depending on where you dropped the needle. Obsessed kids everywhere spent HOURS trying to place the needle just so, in order to hear all eight endings in which the 'super-spectacular day' went horribly wrong. I don't know if it's a good or a bad thing that we don't have to work for it anymore, but it's great to hear the song(s) again." I loved this flexidisc when it came out! Man, this is great! Link (Thanks, Wade!) [Boing Boing] 10:10:30 AM    comment []

Back to Blog - Who Controls the Internet?. Most happy to be here. Mostly, but not entirely, I'll talk this week about Who Controls the Internet. If you've already read the book, I'd love to hear any comments or feedback. The book can be purchased here or at most online or physical bookstores. Let me introduce the book... One Internet or Many?. One theme in the book is that an evolving balkanization of the internet is often driven by consumer preference. A good example is the suprising decline in the use of the English language on the Web. A quote from Ch. 3 The Economist confidently stated in in 1996 that "English... [Lessig Blog] 10:05:42 AM    comment []

Spime Watch XIV: Spimed Corpses. J. Eric Townsend's proto-spimes, spimejackers and Spime Retrofit Modules. http://www.allartburns.org/?p=60 Complete, hour-long MP3 of Bruce Sterling ETech06 speech. http://www.itconversations.com/shows/detail717.html http://www.morerfid.com/details.php?subdetail=Report&;action=details&report_id=1615&display=RFID VeriChip and Ricoh to Demonstrate VeriTrace, an End-to-End Implantable Tagging Solution for Remains and Evidentiary Items at the 2006 National Disaster Medical System Conference (((In a plainer English: "tagging corpses in massive disasters, and hotlinking them, via digital photos, to the exact positions on our planet where the corpses were strewn."))) [Beyond the Beyond] 9:58:50 AM    comment []

Thank You Stephen Colbert. A tribute website to Colbert has sprung up with thousands of thankyous from the blogosphere ---  plus YouTube's nice tripartate of the White House sendup speech for easy viewing. (merci to west coast bro-in-law Gary H. for the link) And fellow blogger Kid Oakland does a great deconstruction of Colbert's method. Delicious. [Girl in the Locker Room!] 9:57:51 AM    comment []

FrederickLane.com — 2006-04-26 Lost in MySpace. FrederickLane.com — 2006-04-26 Lost in MySpace: The 2006 Hawley Foundation Lecture Lost in MySpace:Social Networking, Student Privacy,and Self-Protection Frederick Lane this looks like an interesting talk. [Too many topics, too little time.] 9:51:31 AM    comment []