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	August 6, 2003

IS PATENT LAW STIFLING INNOVATION? The always-worth-reading Innovation Weekly (free trial subscription here) has some great catches this week, including stories on Xerox's new unphotocopiable paper (uses polarization) and a glove that translates American Sign Language into spoken English. I'm always (briefly) filled with hope when I read this publication. Here's their capsule of, and link to, a great article on how new patent laws are suffocating innovation, a subject that readers of this blog know is dear to my heart: A landmark U.S. Court of Appeals decision handed down five years ago is still spurring controversy between business people with opposing viewpoints on the nature of innovation. The decision, in "State Street v. Signature Financial," bestowed court approval to the idea of granting business method patents. In 1997, the year before the ruling, the Patent Office received 927 applications under its main classification for business methods. In 2001, that number rose to 8,700, falling to 5,000 last year as many small companies went out of business. Jay Walker, the e-commerce pioneer who founded Priceline.com, considers himself a champion of innovation. His business, Walker Digital LLC, has made a business of patenting just about any business method it can. The company owns more than 200 today, including patents for online dating and running slot machines. Patents are designed to encourage innovation by guaranteeing inventors some reward -- generally exclusive rights for 20 years. The idea must be considered useful, new and "non-obvious." In computers, the definition of "obvious" is blurry. That fuzziness has sparked concerns that too many "obvious" ideas are getting patented. "Too many small companies are spending their money on patent lawyers, not research," says Tim O'Reilly, another e-commerce pioneer whose company invented the Internet banner ad. "It's not innovation. It's a business model of ripping off the patent system." (AP 26 Jul 2003) 4:37:15 PM  trackback []  comment []

TOP 50 SALON BLOGS OF THE MONTH The monthly directory of Salon's most popular blogs, showing the ranking in number of hits in the past month (to August 5) and the ranking in number of inbound blogs (per Technorati) at August 5, is now up here. The top 75 Salon blogs received an aggregate 1,000,000 hits this month, a record and up 5% from last month. The aggregrate number of inbound links to the top 75 blogs is up 25% this month to over 3,000. We're still getting blogrolled in record numbers. Conclusive Evidence (#15) and Robert's Virtual Soapbox (#36) are getting lots of hits for their coverage of the Dean and Kerry campaigns respectively. All Day Permanent Red (#25) has soared up the list, even though he's been offline with serious technical problems since July 21. Can anyone help him out?  Base Camp's (#39) fascinating travelblogue and Dr. Omed's (#46) artistic wizardry made impressive debuts into the list. The female contingent on the top 50 remained steady at sixteen. Permanent Red and Iraq Democracy Watch (#19) are the 'youngest' blogs on the list -- they're each less than three months old. For the best of Salon (and other) blogs, check out the Virtual Occoquan, whose new edition Death & Poetry is just out. 8:21:46 AM  trackback []  comment []

© Copyright 2004 Dave Pollard. Last update: 19/02/2004; 2:50:10 PM.