GrafoDexia

This site is devoted to copyright and issues of 'intellectual property,' particularly the issue's analytical aspects. It also concerns itself with the gap between public perception and the true facts, and with the significant lag time between the coverage on more technical sites and the mainstream press. For site feed, see: http://grafodexia.blogspot.com/atom.xml To see the list of sites monitored to create this site, see: http://rpc.bloglines.com/blogroll?html=1&id=CopyrightJournal

Thursday, June 23, 2011

Nice to see someone studying IPhttp://www.blogger.com/img/blank.gif issues quantitatively.

A Generation of Software Patents

James E. Bessen

This report examines changes in the patenting behavior of the software industry since the 1990s. It finds that most software firms still do not patent, most software patents are obtained by a few large firms in the software industry or in other industries, and the risk of litigation from software patents continues to increase dramatically. Given these findings, it is hard to conclude that software patents have provided a net social benefit in the software industry.

Wednesday, June 22, 2011

The cloud

You know that the "media cloud" has made it when copyhttp://www.blogger.com/img/blank.gif-cat clouds like Best Buy's new one start popping up.

On the other hand, being in Paris for the summer, I have discovered a huge downside: because you don't actually own your media, artificial restrictions get put in place. Not only do subscription services like Netflix stop working, but even movies that you ostensibly paid for with Amazon's video-on-demand service stop working. If you're going to charge the same price that the physical media costs, at least make it just as useful.