"patent" entries

Four short links: 29 November 2013

Four short links: 29 November 2013

Hardware Market, Bio Patent History Lesson, Multiplayer Mathematics, and TV Numbers (Down)

  1. Huaqiang Bei Map for Makers — excellent resource for visitors to an iconic huge electronics market in Shenzhen. (via Bunnie Huang)
  2. A 16th Century Dutchman Can Tell us Everything We Need to Know about GMO PatentsThere’s nothing wrong with this division of labor, except that it means that fewer people are tinkering. We’ve centralized the responsibility for agricultural innovation among a few engineers, even fewer investors, and just a handful of corporations. (and check out the historical story—it’s GREAT)
  3. Polymath Projects — massively multiplayer mathematical proving ground. Let the “how many mathematicians does it take” jokes commence. (via Slashdot)
  4. Stats on Dying TV — like a Mary Meeker preso, accumulation of evidence that TV screens and cable subscriptions are dying and mobile-consumed media are taking its place.
Four short links: 30 April 2012

Four short links: 30 April 2012

A/B Testing in Rails, Open Source Groupware, Is the Internet Innovative, and Patent Art

  1. Chanko (Github) — trivial A/B testing from within Rails.
  2. OpenMeetings — Apache project for audio/video conferencing, screen sharing, whiteboard, calendar, and other groupware features.
  3. Low Innovation Internet (Wired) — I disagree, I think this is a Louis CK Nobody’s Happy moment. We renormalize after change and become blind to the amazing things we’re surrounded by. Hundreds of thousands (millions?) of people work from home, collaborate to develop software that has saved the world billions of dollars in licensing fees, provide services, write and share books, make voice and video calls, create movies, fund creative projects, buy and sell used goods, and you’re unhappy because there aren’t “huge changes”? Have you spoken to someone in the publishing, music, TV, film, newspaper, retail, telephone, or indeed any industry that exists outside your cave, you obtuse contrarian pillock? There’s no room on my Internet for weenie whiners.
  4. Context-Free Patent Art — endlessly amusing. (via David Kaneda)

Intellectual Property Strategy: a book, a panel, and a movement

The speakers, who included household names of the free culture movement such as Lawrence Lessig and Eric von Hippel, emphasized the culture shift that is breaking the seemingly iron grip of current policies that favor wealthy companies with portfolios of patents and copyrights. But I think even these speakers failed to convey how huge a sea change in underway.

Should the patent office open its internal guidelines to the public?

Anyone following policy issues around technological innovation has noticed the power and scope of patents expanding over time. To understand the forces contributing to this, I recommend a thoughtful, readable summary–and highlight the role played by internal documents at the patent office.

Software patents, prior art, and revelations of the Peer to Patent review

Besides the greater openness that Peer to Patent promotes in
evaluating individual patent applications, it is creating a new
transparency and understanding of the functioning of the patent system
as a whole. Problems with prior art disproportionately affect
software.

Patent database up and running

U.S. Patent data that once carried a high access fee is now available for free online.

Thanks to a significant effort, 20 terabytes of U.S. patent data are now on the Internet and 50 more are on the way.

Beware the march of the IP trolls at the House Committee on Small Business

What new massacre of technological and cultural innovators is being planned behind closed doors?

Four short links: 26 January 2010

Four short links: 26 January 2010

Kids Online, Balanced IP Law, Open Haiti Street Maps, and Stages of Social Online Experience

  1. If Kids Are Awake, They’re Probably Online (NYTimes) — kids aged 8-18 spend, on average, 10 hours/day using smart phone, computer, television, or some other electronic device. (via Hamish MacEwan)
  2. Brazil’s WIPO Proposal on Patent Limitations and Exceptions — well-argued proposal for balanced IP law.

    16.Our experience also illustrates how difficult it is to effectively make use of compulsory licenses. Our pharmaceutical industry took almost two years to develop and produce the licensed patent, because, unfortunately the patent, as granted in Brazil and in other countries, was not sufficiently revealed to allow its production as promptly as desired.

    17.We reserve the right to come back to the discussion of this problem in other documents concerning to what extent the disclosure of patents is preserving (or not) the essentials of the patent system. The question we now pose ourselves is: considering the checks and balances of the patent system, what is the value of a patent if a third party cannot use it when it falls into the public domain or, exceptionally, when its compulsory licensing is deemed necessary?

  3. OpenStreetMaps the Default in Haiti — rescue workers are loading OSM street maps onto GPS units to get street-level detail maps of Haiti. The team members are thrilled to have this resource you have created. I wish you could see their faces ‘light up’ when I take their GPS unit and tell them that I’m going to give them street level detail maps. (via Simon Willison)
  4. We-to-Me Participation (Nina Simon) — useful mental framework for thinking about social software and online experiences, both from the point of view of a cultural institution and for any online activity. Stage one provides people with access to the content that they seek. Stage two provides an opportunity for inquiry and for visitors to take action and ask questions. Stage three lets people see where their interests and actions fit in the wider community of visitors to the institution. Stage four helps visitors connect with particular people—staff members and other visitors—who share their content and activity interests. Stage five makes the entire institution feel like a social place, full of potentially interesting, challenging, enriching encounters with other people.
Four short links: 12 January 2010

Four short links: 12 January 2010

Navigating Discussions, Sensing The World, Patent Trolls, and Privacy Power

  1. Tldran application for navigating through large-scale online discussions. The application visualizes structures and patterns within ongoing conversations to let the user browse to content of most interest. In addition to visual overviews, it also incorporates features such as thread summarization, non-linear navigation, multi-dimensional filtering, and various other features that improve the experience of participating in large-discussions.
  2. City Senses — Chris Heathcote points out that Pachube can be used as a sensor for the world, not just for energy. His pilot projects are good, and I’d like to see more. The biggest change I’m predicting for the next 10 years is the rise of sensor networks: smart stuff, aware environments, and loquacious locations.
  3. Aggressive Patent Trolls — 1/3 of Union Square Ventures startups are threatened by patent trolls. (via Hacker News)
  4. Anopticon — Italian project to document the location of CCTV cameras, many of which were set up illegally. The site is in Italian, but there’s some information on this article in The Register. Information is power, and this is a clever way for citizens to regain power in the privacy war. (via Nicholas Clark)

The fate of WIPO, ACTA, and other intellectual property pushes in the international economy

Intellectual property wars are fiercer than ever, although the institutions most affected (including the media) prefer not to talk about them. But we may be in for a pendulum shift. I recently put out a tweet on this topic and was asked to expand on it. The issues are too big and complex for me to give them a proper…