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ContactThis Week's Issue of IP Memes
Here are few selections from this week's issue of TechnoLawyer.com's IP Memes newsletter. The IP Memes newsletter is available for a free registration and this week's issue was put together by me.
The Presidential Election, Copyright, INDUCE Act (IICA) and Tech Policy
Ernest Miller's blog, "The Importance of . . .," has become a focal point for information and news for the controversial INDUCE Act. He's also begun to pull together information, when he and others can drag it out of the candidates, about the intellectual property stands of the presidential candidates. It's a great place to check if you are interested in trying to learn what might happen in IP law after the 2004 election.
Safeguarding Trade Secrets in the Information Age
Sheryl Willert has a comprehensive article on trade secret protection in the August issue of FindLaw's Modern Practice webzine. As she says, "There are no easy solutions to the problem of protecting trade secrets in the information age. But there are definite steps the employer can take, and these include monitoring business equipment and promulgating unambiguous policies." Getting to "unambiguous? is no easy task, but this article will give you a handy primer of the issues you must consider.
Exploring the Patent Explosion
Berkeley's Bronwyn Hall recent paper takes a close look at the various sources of patent growth in the United States since 1984, drawing some interesting conclusions. Hall notes increases in market value of companies in industries where patent growth surged. The paper also draws some conclusions about the difference in approaches between entry companies and incumbent companies.
If You Have Been Feeling that it's Taking Longer to Get Patents
For chart and graphics fans, IPO.org has a great chart showing the ebb and flow of the length of the pendency of patent applications since 1979, all compared to the baseline goal of 18 months.
Copyscape Internet Infringement Protection
To my surprise, Copyscape's new "infringement protection" service has generated some buzz recently. I've been finding "republishers" of my articles for years by running searches on selected quotes and titles of articles. However, Copyscape offers some nice enhancements and you can run a search on the URL of your article or image. In my test, I found a good number of results that did not seem relevant to my selected article, but I'll be darned if I didn't find a 100% reproduction of my article with no attribution to me whatsoever. I'm impressed enough to recommend that you try Copyscape, although "searching by hand" continues to work quite well.
Columbia University Law Library Music Copyright Infringement Online Archive
The resources you can now find on the Internet are almost without limit. Matt Buchanan's IP blog, Promote the Progress, recently put the spotlight on Columbia Law Library?s online archive about well-known music copyright infringement cases over the years. I agree with Matt's comment that providing music downloads of the songs at issue would be a cool next step.
