Kerala IPR (Intellectual Property Rights) Policy
Via: "ravi srinivas"
[Fwd: Re: OII Call for Applications from Civil Society Practitioners in the global South]
Via: Anasuya Sengupta
Hooray for Prince!
Via: Vivek Narayanan
http://www.nytimes.com/2007/07/22/arts/music/22pare.html?th&emc=th
Music
The Once and Future Prince
By JON PARELES
Published: July 22, 2007
I’VE got lots of money!” Prince exults in “The One U Wanna C,” a come-on
from his new album, “Planet Earth” (Columbia). There’s no reason to
disbelieve him. With a sponsorship deal here and an exclusive show
there, worldwide television appearances and music given away, Prince has
remade himself as a 21st-century pop star. As recording companies bemoan
a crumbling market, Prince is demonstrating that charisma and the
willingness to go out and perform are still bankable. He doesn’t have to
go multiplatinum — he’s multiplatform.
[photo: Prince has caused a stir by distributing his new album free in a
British newspaper, one of many ways he is showing that he thinks
differently about the music business.]
Although Prince declined to be interviewed about “Planet Earth,” he has
been highly visible lately. His career is heading into its third decade,
and he could have long since become a nostalgia act. Instead he figured
out early how to do what he wants in a 21st-century music business, and
clearly what he wants is to make more music. Despite his flamboyant
wardrobe and his fixation on the color purple, his career choices have
been savvy ones, especially for someone so compulsively prolific.
Like most pop stars, he goes on major tours to coincide with album
releases, which for Prince are frequent. But he also gets out and
performs whenever he chooses. Last year he took over a club in Las Vegas
and renamed it 3121, after his 2006 album “3121,” which briefly hit No.
1 and spawned multiple conflicting theories about the significance of
the number. He started playing there twice a week for 900 people at $125
a ticket. In February he had an audience in the millions as the halftime
entertainment for the Super Bowl. He has gone on to play well-publicized
shows at the Roosevelt Hotel in Hollywood for a few hundred people
paying $3,121 per couple, and another elite show last weekend in East
Hampton for about $3,000 per person.
Meanwhile Verizon put Prince in commercials that use “Guitar,” another
song from “Planet Earth,” as bait for its V Cast Song ID service, making
the song a free download to certain cellphones. On July 7 Prince
introduced a perfume, 3121, by performing at Macy’s in Minneapolis.
In Britain he infuriated retailers by agreeing to have a newspaper, The
Mail on Sunday, include the complete “Planet Earth” CD in copies on July
15. (The album is due for American release this Tuesday.) Presumably The
Mail paid him something in the range of what he could have earned, much
more slowly, through album sales. British fans have remunerated him in
other ways. On Aug. 1 he starts a string of no fewer than 21 sold-out
arena concerts, 20,000 seats each, at the O2 (formerly the Millennium
Dome) in London at the relatively low ticket price of £31.21, about $64.
The O2 ticket price also includes a copy of the album; Prince did the
same thing with his tour for “Musicology” in 2004. Those “Musicology”
albums were counted toward the pop charts, which then changed their
rules; the “Planet Earth” albums will not be. But fans will have the record.
Prince’s priorities are obvious. The main one is getting his music to an
audience, whether it’s purchased or not. “Prince’s only aim is to get
music direct to those that want to hear it,” his spokesman said when
announcing that The Mail would include the CD. (After the newspaper
giveaway was announced, Columbia Records’ corporate parent, Sony Music,
chose not to release “Planet Earth” for retail sale in Britain.) Other
musicians may think that their best chance at a livelihood is locking
away their music — impossible as that is in the digital era — and
demanding that fans buy everything they want to hear. But Prince is
confident that his listeners will support him, if not through CD sales
then at shows or through other deals.
This is how most pop stars operate now: as brand-name corporations
taking in revenue streams from publishing, touring, merchandising,
advertising, ringtones, fashion, satellite radio gigs or whatever else
their advisers can come up with. Rare indeed are holdouts like Bruce
Springsteen who simply perform and record. The usual rationale is that
hearing a U2 song in an iPod commercial or seeing Shakira’s face on a
cellphone billboard will get listeners interested in the albums that
these artists release every few years after much painstaking effort.
But Prince is different. His way of working has nothing to do with
scarcity. In the studio — he has his own recording complex, Paisley Park
near Minneapolis — he is a torrent of new songs, while older, unreleased
ones fill the archive he calls the Vault. Prince apparently has to hold
himself back to release only one album a year. He’s equally
indefatigable in concert. On the road he regularly follows full-tilt
shows — singing, playing, dancing, sweating — with jam sessions that
stretch into the night. It doesn’t hurt that at 49 he can still act like
a sex symbol and that his stage shows are unpredictable.
Through it all he still aims for hit singles. Although he has delved
into all sorts of music, his favorite form is clearly the four-minute
pop tune full of hooks. But his career choices don’t revolve around
squeezing the maximum return out of a few precious songs. They’re about
letting the music flow.
Prince gravitated early to the Internet. Even in the days of dial-up he
sought to make his music available online, first as a way of ordering
albums and then through digital distribution. (He was also ahead of his
time with another form of communication: text messaging abbreviations,
having long ago traded “you” for “U.”) Where the Internet truism is that
information wants to be free, Prince’s corollary is that music wants to
be heard.
How much he makes from his various efforts is a closely guarded secret.
But he’s not dependent on royalties trickling in from retail album sales
after being filtered through major-label accounting procedures. Instead
someone — a sponsor, a newspaper, a promoter — pays him upfront, making
disc sales less important. Which is not to say that he’s doing badly on
that front: “3121” sold about 520,000 copies, according to Nielsen
SoundScan, and “Musicology,” with its concert giveaways, was certified
multiplatinum.
Prince ended a two-decade contract with Warner Brothers Records in 1996
after a very public falling out with the label. During the mid-1990s he
appeared with the word “Slave” painted on his face and said the label
was holding back material he wanted to release. For a while he dropped
the name Prince — which was under contract to Warner Brothers and
Warner/Chappell Music — for an unpronounceable glyph; when the contracts
ran out, he was Prince again. And since leaving Warner Brothers he has
been independent. He owns his recordings himself, beginning with a
three-CD set called “Emancipation” from 1996. He has released albums on
his own NPG label and Web site or has licensed them, one by one, for
distribution by major labels, presumably letting them compete for each
title. Over the past decade he has had albums released through EMI,
Arista, Universal and Sony.
The idea behind long-term recording contracts is that a label will
invest in building a career. But Prince (in part because of Warner
Brothers’ promotion) has been a full-fledged star since the ’80s. So now
a label’s main job for him is to get the CDs into stores.
Prince also experimented with having fans subscribe directly to receive
his music online, which turned out to be a better idea in theory than in
execution. After five years he quietly shut down his NPG Music Club in
2006. Still, his Web site (which is now 3121.com) usually has a rare
recording or two for streaming or downloading. Why not? There’s plenty more.
“Planet Earth” is a good but not great Prince album. Unlike “3121,”
which built many of its tracks around zinging, programmed electronic
sounds, “Planet Earth” sounds largely handmade, even retro. “In this
digital age you could just page me,” Prince sings in “Somewhere Here on
Earth,” a slow-motion falsetto ballad. “I know it’s the rage but it just
don’t engage me like a face-to-face.”
Prince, as usual, is a one-man studio band — drums, keyboards, guitars,
vocals — joined here and there by a horn section or a cooing female
voice. This time he leans toward rock rather than funk. Serious songs
begin and end the album. It starts with “Planet Earth,” an earnest
environmental piano anthem with an orchestral buildup, and winds up with
the devout “Lion of Judah” and with “Resolution,” an antiwar song. In
between, Prince flirts a lot, playing hard-to-get as he rocks through
“Guitar” (“I love you baby, but not like I love my guitar”) and
promising sensual delights in the upbeat “One U Wanna C” and the
slow-grinding “Mr. Goodnight.” There’s also a catchy, nutty song about a
model, “Chelsea Rodgers,” who’s both hard-partying and erudite; Prince
sings that she knows about how “Rome was chillin’ in Carthage in 33 B.C.E.”
Although Columbia probably thinks otherwise, how the album fares
commercially is almost incidental. With or without the CD business,
Prince gets to keep making music: in arenas, in clubs, in the studio.
Fans buy concert tickets, companies rent his panache, pleasure is
shared. It’s a party that can go on a long time.
http://www.nytimes.com/2007/07/22/arts/music/22pare.html?th&emc=th
Music
The Once and Future Prince
By JON PARELES
Published: July 22, 2007
I’VE got lots of money!” Prince exults in “The One U Wanna C,” a come-on
from his new album, “Planet Earth” (Columbia). There’s no reason to
disbelieve him. With a sponsorship deal here and an exclusive show
there, worldwide television appearances and music given away, Prince has
remade himself as a 21st-century pop star. As recording companies bemoan
a crumbling market, Prince is demonstrating that charisma and the
willingness to go out and perform are still bankable. He doesn’t have to
go multiplatinum — he’s multiplatform.
[photo: Prince has caused a stir by distributing his new album free in a
British newspaper, one of many ways he is showing that he thinks
differently about the music business.]
Although Prince declined to be interviewed about “Planet Earth,” he has
been highly visible lately. His career is heading into its third decade,
and he could have long since become a nostalgia act. Instead he figured
out early how to do what he wants in a 21st-century music business, and
clearly what he wants is to make more music. Despite his flamboyant
wardrobe and his fixation on the color purple, his career choices have
been savvy ones, especially for someone so compulsively prolific.
Like most pop stars, he goes on major tours to coincide with album
releases, which for Prince are frequent. But he also gets out and
performs whenever he chooses. Last year he took over a club in Las Vegas
and renamed it 3121, after his 2006 album “3121,” which briefly hit No.
1 and spawned multiple conflicting theories about the significance of
the number. He started playing there twice a week for 900 people at $125
a ticket. In February he had an audience in the millions as the halftime
entertainment for the Super Bowl. He has gone on to play well-publicized
shows at the Roosevelt Hotel in Hollywood for a few hundred people
paying $3,121 per couple, and another elite show last weekend in East
Hampton for about $3,000 per person.
Meanwhile Verizon put Prince in commercials that use “Guitar,” another
song from “Planet Earth,” as bait for its V Cast Song ID service, making
the song a free download to certain cellphones. On July 7 Prince
introduced a perfume, 3121, by performing at Macy’s in Minneapolis.
In Britain he infuriated retailers by agreeing to have a newspaper, The
Mail on Sunday, include the complete “Planet Earth” CD in copies on July
15. (The album is due for American release this Tuesday.) Presumably The
Mail paid him something in the range of what he could have earned, much
more slowly, through album sales. British fans have remunerated him in
other ways. On Aug. 1 he starts a string of no fewer than 21 sold-out
arena concerts, 20,000 seats each, at the O2 (formerly the Millennium
Dome) in London at the relatively low ticket price of £31.21, about $64.
The O2 ticket price also includes a copy of the album; Prince did the
same thing with his tour for “Musicology” in 2004. Those “Musicology”
albums were counted toward the pop charts, which then changed their
rules; the “Planet Earth” albums will not be. But fans will have the record.
Prince’s priorities are obvious. The main one is getting his music to an
audience, whether it’s purchased or not. “Prince’s only aim is to get
music direct to those that want to hear it,” his spokesman said when
announcing that The Mail would include the CD. (After the newspaper
giveaway was announced, Columbia Records’ corporate parent, Sony Music,
chose not to release “Planet Earth” for retail sale in Britain.) Other
musicians may think that their best chance at a livelihood is locking
away their music — impossible as that is in the digital era — and
demanding that fans buy everything they want to hear. But Prince is
confident that his listeners will support him, if not through CD sales
then at shows or through other deals.
This is how most pop stars operate now: as brand-name corporations
taking in revenue streams from publishing, touring, merchandising,
advertising, ringtones, fashion, satellite radio gigs or whatever else
their advisers can come up with. Rare indeed are holdouts like Bruce
Springsteen who simply perform and record. The usual rationale is that
hearing a U2 song in an iPod commercial or seeing Shakira’s face on a
cellphone billboard will get listeners interested in the albums that
these artists release every few years after much painstaking effort.
But Prince is different. His way of working has nothing to do with
scarcity. In the studio — he has his own recording complex, Paisley Park
near Minneapolis — he is a torrent of new songs, while older, unreleased
ones fill the archive he calls the Vault. Prince apparently has to hold
himself back to release only one album a year. He’s equally
indefatigable in concert. On the road he regularly follows full-tilt
shows — singing, playing, dancing, sweating — with jam sessions that
stretch into the night. It doesn’t hurt that at 49 he can still act like
a sex symbol and that his stage shows are unpredictable.
Through it all he still aims for hit singles. Although he has delved
into all sorts of music, his favorite form is clearly the four-minute
pop tune full of hooks. But his career choices don’t revolve around
squeezing the maximum return out of a few precious songs. They’re about
letting the music flow.
Prince gravitated early to the Internet. Even in the days of dial-up he
sought to make his music available online, first as a way of ordering
albums and then through digital distribution. (He was also ahead of his
time with another form of communication: text messaging abbreviations,
having long ago traded “you” for “U.”) Where the Internet truism is that
information wants to be free, Prince’s corollary is that music wants to
be heard.
How much he makes from his various efforts is a closely guarded secret.
But he’s not dependent on royalties trickling in from retail album sales
after being filtered through major-label accounting procedures. Instead
someone — a sponsor, a newspaper, a promoter — pays him upfront, making
disc sales less important. Which is not to say that he’s doing badly on
that front: “3121” sold about 520,000 copies, according to Nielsen
SoundScan, and “Musicology,” with its concert giveaways, was certified
multiplatinum.
Prince ended a two-decade contract with Warner Brothers Records in 1996
after a very public falling out with the label. During the mid-1990s he
appeared with the word “Slave” painted on his face and said the label
was holding back material he wanted to release. For a while he dropped
the name Prince — which was under contract to Warner Brothers and
Warner/Chappell Music — for an unpronounceable glyph; when the contracts
ran out, he was Prince again. And since leaving Warner Brothers he has
been independent. He owns his recordings himself, beginning with a
three-CD set called “Emancipation” from 1996. He has released albums on
his own NPG label and Web site or has licensed them, one by one, for
distribution by major labels, presumably letting them compete for each
title. Over the past decade he has had albums released through EMI,
Arista, Universal and Sony.
The idea behind long-term recording contracts is that a label will
invest in building a career. But Prince (in part because of Warner
Brothers’ promotion) has been a full-fledged star since the ’80s. So now
a label’s main job for him is to get the CDs into stores.
Prince also experimented with having fans subscribe directly to receive
his music online, which turned out to be a better idea in theory than in
execution. After five years he quietly shut down his NPG Music Club in
2006. Still, his Web site (which is now 3121.com) usually has a rare
recording or two for streaming or downloading. Why not? There’s plenty more.
“Planet Earth” is a good but not great Prince album. Unlike “3121,”
which built many of its tracks around zinging, programmed electronic
sounds, “Planet Earth” sounds largely handmade, even retro. “In this
digital age you could just page me,” Prince sings in “Somewhere Here on
Earth,” a slow-motion falsetto ballad. “I know it’s the rage but it just
don’t engage me like a face-to-face.”
Prince, as usual, is a one-man studio band — drums, keyboards, guitars,
vocals — joined here and there by a horn section or a cooing female
voice. This time he leans toward rock rather than funk. Serious songs
begin and end the album. It starts with “Planet Earth,” an earnest
environmental piano anthem with an orchestral buildup, and winds up with
the devout “Lion of Judah” and with “Resolution,” an antiwar song. In
between, Prince flirts a lot, playing hard-to-get as he rocks through
“Guitar” (“I love you baby, but not like I love my guitar”) and
promising sensual delights in the upbeat “One U Wanna C” and the
slow-grinding “Mr. Goodnight.” There’s also a catchy, nutty song about a
model, “Chelsea Rodgers,” who’s both hard-partying and erudite; Prince
sings that she knows about how “Rome was chillin’ in Carthage in 33 B.C.E.”
Although Columbia probably thinks otherwise, how the album fares
commercially is almost incidental. With or without the CD business,
Prince gets to keep making music: in arenas, in clubs, in the studio.
Fans buy concert tickets, companies rent his panache, pleasure is
shared. It’s a party that can go on a long time.
The Detention of Dr. Haneef in Australia
Via: Shuddhabrata Sengupta
Dear All, (apologies for cross posting on Reader List and Commons Law)
Everyone on this list must be familiar with the news of the detention of
a doctor from Bangalore Dr. Haneef, in Australia in connection with the
attacks in Glasgow earlier this month.
Echo of 13 December
In what seems to be spiralling into a strange echo of the 13 December
case, a man is being charged of terrorism in a country continents away,
because he happened to share a house and was related to one of the other
accused, and because of a lent SIM card. But the global 'war against
terror' requires fresh victories, and the Australian government is as
eager as any other to provide them, so it has found and picked Dr. Haneef.
While the Australian government, particularly under John Howard's
stewardship has displayed a degree of paranoia and prejudice, it is
heartening to note that a lot of ordinary people in Australia have come
out in support of the detained doctor. With people demonstrating on
streets, carrying placards that state that they too 'had lent someone a
SIM card'.
See - http://newsbreak.com.au/topic/Peter-Russo
For a good compilation of articles from Australian sources about the
unfolding events of the case.
'Every Drop of Blood is Human
While the Australian state agencies, and several 'anonymous' sources
have sought to plant unsusbstantiated stories that insinuate that Dr.
Haneef was in fact involved in the plot. His legal team, led by
barristers Stephen Keim and Peter Russo have also taken the entire case
into the public domain by releasing transcripts of his interrogation by
the police in which he (Dr. Haneef) while denying any involvement in any
form of terrorism says that he believes "every drop of blood is human.
And I feel for every human being."
See - http://www.abc.net.au/news/stories/2007/07/18/1981921.htm
and -
http://www.theage.com.au/news/national/slow-burn-that-led-team-to-make-transcript-public/2007/07/18/1184559867716.html
for details of the 'leaked transcript'
Reportage in Indian Press
There has been some reportage of these issues in the Indian press. And I
am posting below a report that the Indian Express carried yesterday
about this - which is identical to one found on the -
http://www.worldnewsaustralia.com.au/region.php?id=138540®ion=7 - webpage
http://www.expressindia.com/fullstory.php?newsid=89721
http://www.telegraphindia.com/1070717/asp/nation/story_8068606.asp
'Australian people's support moved Haneef'
Indian Express, Thursday, 17 July
Agencies
Posted online: Thursday, July 19, 2007 at 1330 hours IST
Updated: Thursday, July 19, 2007 at 1335 hours IST
Melbourne, July 19: Indian doctor Mohammed Haneef, charged with
supporting a terrorist organisation, broke down in jail after coming to
know of the widespread support he was getting from common people in
Australia, his lawyer said.
The 27-year old doctor from Bangalore was surprised and deeply touched
when told fellow lawyers as well as ordinary people were rallying behind
him and broke down, his lawyer Peter Russo told protestors outside the
Department of Immigration.
"Some of what's occurring today may come as a little bit of a shock to
him," Russo said adding "... he was moved to tears when I told him about
it (the support) because I think for him he hasn't understood the impact
that it's had on the rest of the community and I don't think he regards
himself as being such an important person," The Australian quoted him as
saying.
He said he expected Haneef would be amazed at his high-profile coverage
after having access to newspapers and television news reports for the
first time last night since his arrest at Brisbane Airport on July two.
"I'm pretty sure he will be stunned and he's going to have a million
questions for me," he said.
He was moved to the Wolston correctional centre on Wednesday after
failing to post a USD 10,000 surety, which would allow him to be
transferred to the Villawood Immigration Detention Centre in Sydney.
He is charged with supporting a terrorist organisation after giving a
mobile phone SIM card to a relative later accused of being involved in
plotting car bomb attacks in the UK.
Dear All, (apologies for cross posting on Reader List and Commons Law)
Everyone on this list must be familiar with the news of the detention of
a doctor from Bangalore Dr. Haneef, in Australia in connection with the
attacks in Glasgow earlier this month.
Echo of 13 December
In what seems to be spiralling into a strange echo of the 13 December
case, a man is being charged of terrorism in a country continents away,
because he happened to share a house and was related to one of the other
accused, and because of a lent SIM card. But the global 'war against
terror' requires fresh victories, and the Australian government is as
eager as any other to provide them, so it has found and picked Dr. Haneef.
While the Australian government, particularly under John Howard's
stewardship has displayed a degree of paranoia and prejudice, it is
heartening to note that a lot of ordinary people in Australia have come
out in support of the detained doctor. With people demonstrating on
streets, carrying placards that state that they too 'had lent someone a
SIM card'.
See - http://newsbreak.com.au/topic/Peter-Russo
For a good compilation of articles from Australian sources about the
unfolding events of the case.
'Every Drop of Blood is Human
While the Australian state agencies, and several 'anonymous' sources
have sought to plant unsusbstantiated stories that insinuate that Dr.
Haneef was in fact involved in the plot. His legal team, led by
barristers Stephen Keim and Peter Russo have also taken the entire case
into the public domain by releasing transcripts of his interrogation by
the police in which he (Dr. Haneef) while denying any involvement in any
form of terrorism says that he believes "every drop of blood is human.
And I feel for every human being."
See - http://www.abc.net.au/news/stories/2007/07/18/1981921.htm
and -
http://www.theage.com.au/news/national/slow-burn-that-led-team-to-make-transcript-public/2007/07/18/1184559867716.html
for details of the 'leaked transcript'
Reportage in Indian Press
There has been some reportage of these issues in the Indian press. And I
am posting below a report that the Indian Express carried yesterday
about this - which is identical to one found on the -
http://www.worldnewsaustralia.com.au/region.php?id=138540®ion=7 - webpage
http://www.expressindia.com/fullstory.php?newsid=89721
http://www.telegraphindia.com/1070717/asp/nation/story_8068606.asp
'Australian people's support moved Haneef'
Indian Express, Thursday, 17 July
Agencies
Posted online: Thursday, July 19, 2007 at 1330 hours IST
Updated: Thursday, July 19, 2007 at 1335 hours IST
Melbourne, July 19: Indian doctor Mohammed Haneef, charged with
supporting a terrorist organisation, broke down in jail after coming to
know of the widespread support he was getting from common people in
Australia, his lawyer said.
The 27-year old doctor from Bangalore was surprised and deeply touched
when told fellow lawyers as well as ordinary people were rallying behind
him and broke down, his lawyer Peter Russo told protestors outside the
Department of Immigration.
"Some of what's occurring today may come as a little bit of a shock to
him," Russo said adding "... he was moved to tears when I told him about
it (the support) because I think for him he hasn't understood the impact
that it's had on the rest of the community and I don't think he regards
himself as being such an important person," The Australian quoted him as
saying.
He said he expected Haneef would be amazed at his high-profile coverage
after having access to newspapers and television news reports for the
first time last night since his arrest at Brisbane Airport on July two.
"I'm pretty sure he will be stunned and he's going to have a million
questions for me," he said.
He was moved to the Wolston correctional centre on Wednesday after
failing to post a USD 10,000 surety, which would allow him to be
transferred to the Villawood Immigration Detention Centre in Sydney.
He is charged with supporting a terrorist organisation after giving a
mobile phone SIM card to a relative later accused of being involved in
plotting car bomb attacks in the UK.
Do Patents Work?
Via: "Prabhu Ram"
>NYTimes
http://www.nytimes.com/2007/07/15/business/yourmoney/15proto.html?ei=5087%0A&em=&en=bd21af2cc2313a80&ex=1184731200&adxnnl=1&adxnnlx=1184569907-DdNTwJv4u7XyO3xd1Zj7RQ&pagewanted=print
A Patent Is Worth Having, Right? Well, Maybe Not
By MICHAEL FITZGERALD
PATENTS are supposed to give inventors an incentive to create things
that spur economic growth. For some companies, especially in the
pharmaceutical business, patents do just that by allowing them to pull
in billions in profits from brand-name, blockbuster drugs. But for
most public companies, patents don't pay off, say a couple of
researchers who have crunched the numbers.
"Today, over all, patents don't work; for the information technology
industry especially, they don't work," said James Bessen, who became a
lecturer at Boston University's law school after a career in business.
In 1983, he created the first computer publishing software with
Wysiwyg (an acronym for "what you see is what you get") printing
abilities. He also founded a desktop publishing company, Bestinfo,
later acquired by Intergraph.
Neither Mr. Bessen nor his company patented anything, in part because
his lawyers told him that software couldn't be patented at the time.
He ultimately became interested in whether patents spurred innovation,
since the software industry for years innovated steadily without using
many patents. He and a colleague, Michael J. Meurer, are readying a
book on the topic, "Do Patents Work?," due in 2008. (A synopsis and
sample chapters are at researchoninnovation.org/dopatentswork/.)
The two researchers have analyzed data from 1976 to 1999, the most
recent year with complete data. They found that starting in the late
1990s, publicly traded companies saw patent litigation costs outstrip
patent profits. Specifically, they estimate that about $8.4 billion in
global profits came directly from patents held by publicly traded
United States companies in 1997, rising to about $9.3 billion in 1999,
with two-thirds of the profits going to chemical and pharmaceutical
companies. Domestic litigation costs alone, meanwhile, soared to $16
billion in 1999 from $8 billion in 1997.
Things have probably become worse since then. For instance, patent
litigation is up: there were 2,318 patent-related suits in 1999, and
2,830 in fiscal 2006 (though that's down from the peak year, 2004,
when 3,075 were filed). Mr. Bessen said awards in patent cases also
seemed to be up, though he was less confident in that data. Worse, he
says, companies doing the most research and development are sued the
most.
Mr. Bessen's critique of the patent system does not go so far as that
of economists like Michele Boldrin and David K. Levine, who argue that
the patent system should be abolished (
http://www.dklevine.com/general/intellectual/againstnew.htm). Mr.
Bessen said that besides girding the pharmaceutical industry, the
system did seem to work reasonably well for small companies and
individual inventors. Still, he said that "our finding is that the
risk of patent litigation is creating a disincentive for R&D,"
especially for information technology companies, and that the system
urgently needs change.
Mr. Bessen's data is controversial. John F. Duffy, a law professor at
George Washington University, thinks that Mr. Bessen and Mr. Meurer
have undervalued the profits made from patented items, though he
acknowledged that a vast majority of patents are worthless.
Mr. Duffy, who thinks that the patent system remains a powerful
innovation engine for the economy, also noted that the data covers
only the private value of patents — it does not try to measure the
social value of patents, that is, the impact an invention has for
society at large. How, for example, might one measure the value of the
stability of an airplane, which can be traced to an invention patented
by the Wright Brothers?
Still, Mr. Duffy does not discount the research. In fact, he has
invited Mr. Meurer to present it at a conference later this summer.
"The numbers are serious, and they are provocative," Mr. Duffy said.
The data don't seem out of line to R. Polk Wagner, a law professor at
the University of Pennsylvania. He said that other research has
established that patents typically are worth less than $10,000. "It's
not any secret that on a cash basis, it doesn't make sense to file
patents, and yet companies do it," Mr. Wagner said.
Some companies are still spending billions on research programs
despite the increase in litigation costs. "Whether or not the R&D
efforts you make invite litigation in no way relates to whether you do
them," said Bernard S. Meyerson, an I.B.M. fellow who is named on more
than 40 patents and is currently chief technologist at its systems and
technology group. I.B.M. has one of the corporate world's largest
research budgets, spending some $6 billion a year. And it does make
money from its patents, at least on a licensing basis.
Of course, I.B.M. also employs 370 corporate patent lawyers who Mr.
Meyerson said work "hand in hand" with the company's inventors, trying
to make sure that the company is aware of patent pitfalls that might
affect its work.
I.B.M. and many other large high-tech companies have hefty patent
portfolios, which Mr. Meyerson said deters the companies from suing
one another. He said the industry operates under a large
intellectual-property umbrella: "you are licensed under mine, I'm
licensed under yours, and by declaring peace as opposed to war, you
have freedom of action," Mr. Meyerson said.
Even so, he said I.B.M. is concerned that innovation could be choked
by patent litigation and would like to see the system reformed.
Congress could step in, and there are patent reform bills in the House
and the Senate, with many of the provisions aimed at reining in
litigation and damage awards. But this marks the third consecutive
year that Congress has considered patent reform, and there is enough
opposition from large companies to suggest that it will again have to
wait until next year.
There are other paths to change: the United States Patent and
Trademark Office could open patent applications to public comment,
which could help patent examiners find applicable previous inventions.
The office in June began a yearlong experiment allowing open comment
on 250 patent applications
(www.uspto.gov/web/offices/com/speeches/07-21.htm). The Web is already
ahead of the patent office: a site called wikipatents
(www.wikipatents.com) has created an open comment process for several
years' worth of patent applications.
ANOTHER might be to increase the number of appeals courts that handle
patent cases. Right now, there is only one, the United States Court of
Appeals for the Federal Circuit. The Supreme Court, meanwhile, may
have helped the system immensely with a ruling in June that should
stiffen the standard of "obviousness," the key criterion in granting a
patent. Tougher standards may weed out many bad patents and reduce
litigation.
But technological inventions are often not obvious, especially when it
comes to the esoteric world of software, where it can be unclear even
to the inventor what the patent will be good for.
Mr. Bessen, for one, is not optimistic. "Things are going to get a lot
worse before they get better for the technology industry," he said. If
he's correct, it will become harder to question his economic analysis
of the current patent system.
Michael Fitzgerald is a Boston-area writer on business, technology and
culture. E-mail: mfitz@nytimes.com.
>NYTimes
http://www.nytimes.com/2007/07/15/business/yourmoney/15proto.html?ei=5087%0A&em=&en=bd21af2cc2313a80&ex=1184731200&adxnnl=1&adxnnlx=1184569907-DdNTwJv4u7XyO3xd1Zj7RQ&pagewanted=print
A Patent Is Worth Having, Right? Well, Maybe Not
By MICHAEL FITZGERALD
PATENTS are supposed to give inventors an incentive to create things
that spur economic growth. For some companies, especially in the
pharmaceutical business, patents do just that by allowing them to pull
in billions in profits from brand-name, blockbuster drugs. But for
most public companies, patents don't pay off, say a couple of
researchers who have crunched the numbers.
"Today, over all, patents don't work; for the information technology
industry especially, they don't work," said James Bessen, who became a
lecturer at Boston University's law school after a career in business.
In 1983, he created the first computer publishing software with
Wysiwyg (an acronym for "what you see is what you get") printing
abilities. He also founded a desktop publishing company, Bestinfo,
later acquired by Intergraph.
Neither Mr. Bessen nor his company patented anything, in part because
his lawyers told him that software couldn't be patented at the time.
He ultimately became interested in whether patents spurred innovation,
since the software industry for years innovated steadily without using
many patents. He and a colleague, Michael J. Meurer, are readying a
book on the topic, "Do Patents Work?," due in 2008. (A synopsis and
sample chapters are at researchoninnovation.org/dopatentswork/.)
The two researchers have analyzed data from 1976 to 1999, the most
recent year with complete data. They found that starting in the late
1990s, publicly traded companies saw patent litigation costs outstrip
patent profits. Specifically, they estimate that about $8.4 billion in
global profits came directly from patents held by publicly traded
United States companies in 1997, rising to about $9.3 billion in 1999,
with two-thirds of the profits going to chemical and pharmaceutical
companies. Domestic litigation costs alone, meanwhile, soared to $16
billion in 1999 from $8 billion in 1997.
Things have probably become worse since then. For instance, patent
litigation is up: there were 2,318 patent-related suits in 1999, and
2,830 in fiscal 2006 (though that's down from the peak year, 2004,
when 3,075 were filed). Mr. Bessen said awards in patent cases also
seemed to be up, though he was less confident in that data. Worse, he
says, companies doing the most research and development are sued the
most.
Mr. Bessen's critique of the patent system does not go so far as that
of economists like Michele Boldrin and David K. Levine, who argue that
the patent system should be abolished (
http://www.dklevine.com/general/intellectual/againstnew.htm). Mr.
Bessen said that besides girding the pharmaceutical industry, the
system did seem to work reasonably well for small companies and
individual inventors. Still, he said that "our finding is that the
risk of patent litigation is creating a disincentive for R&D,"
especially for information technology companies, and that the system
urgently needs change.
Mr. Bessen's data is controversial. John F. Duffy, a law professor at
George Washington University, thinks that Mr. Bessen and Mr. Meurer
have undervalued the profits made from patented items, though he
acknowledged that a vast majority of patents are worthless.
Mr. Duffy, who thinks that the patent system remains a powerful
innovation engine for the economy, also noted that the data covers
only the private value of patents — it does not try to measure the
social value of patents, that is, the impact an invention has for
society at large. How, for example, might one measure the value of the
stability of an airplane, which can be traced to an invention patented
by the Wright Brothers?
Still, Mr. Duffy does not discount the research. In fact, he has
invited Mr. Meurer to present it at a conference later this summer.
"The numbers are serious, and they are provocative," Mr. Duffy said.
The data don't seem out of line to R. Polk Wagner, a law professor at
the University of Pennsylvania. He said that other research has
established that patents typically are worth less than $10,000. "It's
not any secret that on a cash basis, it doesn't make sense to file
patents, and yet companies do it," Mr. Wagner said.
Some companies are still spending billions on research programs
despite the increase in litigation costs. "Whether or not the R&D
efforts you make invite litigation in no way relates to whether you do
them," said Bernard S. Meyerson, an I.B.M. fellow who is named on more
than 40 patents and is currently chief technologist at its systems and
technology group. I.B.M. has one of the corporate world's largest
research budgets, spending some $6 billion a year. And it does make
money from its patents, at least on a licensing basis.
Of course, I.B.M. also employs 370 corporate patent lawyers who Mr.
Meyerson said work "hand in hand" with the company's inventors, trying
to make sure that the company is aware of patent pitfalls that might
affect its work.
I.B.M. and many other large high-tech companies have hefty patent
portfolios, which Mr. Meyerson said deters the companies from suing
one another. He said the industry operates under a large
intellectual-property umbrella: "you are licensed under mine, I'm
licensed under yours, and by declaring peace as opposed to war, you
have freedom of action," Mr. Meyerson said.
Even so, he said I.B.M. is concerned that innovation could be choked
by patent litigation and would like to see the system reformed.
Congress could step in, and there are patent reform bills in the House
and the Senate, with many of the provisions aimed at reining in
litigation and damage awards. But this marks the third consecutive
year that Congress has considered patent reform, and there is enough
opposition from large companies to suggest that it will again have to
wait until next year.
There are other paths to change: the United States Patent and
Trademark Office could open patent applications to public comment,
which could help patent examiners find applicable previous inventions.
The office in June began a yearlong experiment allowing open comment
on 250 patent applications
(www.uspto.gov/web/offices/com/speeches/07-21.htm). The Web is already
ahead of the patent office: a site called wikipatents
(www.wikipatents.com) has created an open comment process for several
years' worth of patent applications.
ANOTHER might be to increase the number of appeals courts that handle
patent cases. Right now, there is only one, the United States Court of
Appeals for the Federal Circuit. The Supreme Court, meanwhile, may
have helped the system immensely with a ruling in June that should
stiffen the standard of "obviousness," the key criterion in granting a
patent. Tougher standards may weed out many bad patents and reduce
litigation.
But technological inventions are often not obvious, especially when it
comes to the esoteric world of software, where it can be unclear even
to the inventor what the patent will be good for.
Mr. Bessen, for one, is not optimistic. "Things are going to get a lot
worse before they get better for the technology industry," he said. If
he's correct, it will become harder to question his economic analysis
of the current patent system.
Michael Fitzgerald is a Boston-area writer on business, technology and
culture. E-mail: mfitz@nytimes.com.
Patent board reserves verdict on Novartis plea
Via: "Prabhu Ram"
Patent board reserves verdict on Novartis plea
BS Reporter / Chennai July 11, 2007
The Indian Patent Appellate Board (IPAB) on Tuesday reserved judgement
on Novartis' appeal challenging the appointment of former Controller
General of Patents S Chandrasekhar as a technical member of IPAB,
which is hearing its appeal against the Indian patent office's move to
not allow patent protection to its anti-cancer drug Glivec in India.
The Swiss pharma major had objected to the composition of the IPAB
patents cell on the grounds that Chandrasekhar was Controller General
of Patents when the company's original application for Glivec was
rejected.
Chandrasekhar joined IPAB a few months ago, following his retirement
from the IP office.
Arguing on behalf of Novartis, senior counsels Shanthi Bhusan and
Habibullah Basha submitted that the technical cell could have one more
technical member in addition to Chandrasekhar or the tribunal could
ask the government to appoint another person.
The Patents Act allows only one judicial member and one technical
member at present.
Additional Solicitor General V T Gopalan, arguing on behalf of the
Centre and Controller General of Patents before the tribunal, defended
the appointment of Chandrasekhar as technical member of IPAB.
He contended that Novartis should have made its objection when the
case was shifted to the appellate board. Since it had failed to do
that, it was not right to raise the issue now, he added.
He argued that once a statutory order was passed, the tribunal should
start hearing the case without asking for appointing another person.
IPAB is hearing the patent case following a decision of the Madras
High Court to transfer one of the cases – on the decision of the
Chennai patent office to reject the Glivec patent – to IPAB.
http://www.business-standard.com/common/storypage.php?autono=290733&leftnm=1&subLeft=0&chkFlg=
Patent board reserves verdict on Novartis plea
BS Reporter / Chennai July 11, 2007
The Indian Patent Appellate Board (IPAB) on Tuesday reserved judgement
on Novartis' appeal challenging the appointment of former Controller
General of Patents S Chandrasekhar as a technical member of IPAB,
which is hearing its appeal against the Indian patent office's move to
not allow patent protection to its anti-cancer drug Glivec in India.
The Swiss pharma major had objected to the composition of the IPAB
patents cell on the grounds that Chandrasekhar was Controller General
of Patents when the company's original application for Glivec was
rejected.
Chandrasekhar joined IPAB a few months ago, following his retirement
from the IP office.
Arguing on behalf of Novartis, senior counsels Shanthi Bhusan and
Habibullah Basha submitted that the technical cell could have one more
technical member in addition to Chandrasekhar or the tribunal could
ask the government to appoint another person.
The Patents Act allows only one judicial member and one technical
member at present.
Additional Solicitor General V T Gopalan, arguing on behalf of the
Centre and Controller General of Patents before the tribunal, defended
the appointment of Chandrasekhar as technical member of IPAB.
He contended that Novartis should have made its objection when the
case was shifted to the appellate board. Since it had failed to do
that, it was not right to raise the issue now, he added.
He argued that once a statutory order was passed, the tribunal should
start hearing the case without asking for appointing another person.
IPAB is hearing the patent case following a decision of the Madras
High Court to transfer one of the cases – on the decision of the
Chennai patent office to reject the Glivec patent – to IPAB.
http://www.business-standard.com/common/storypage.php?autono=290733&leftnm=1&subLeft=0&chkFlg=
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