Atlanteknology - Technology News for Atlantic Canada

News from the Canadian Intellectual Property Office (Halifax)

I had the opportunity to speak with the local representative for the Canadian Intellectual Property Office (Tom Boyd) today at a talk he gave and he provided some interesting statistics.

For example, approximately 5000 people per year call CIPO’s office in Halifax. The majority of these inquires relate to ideas that people have come up with. According to Mr. Boyd, about 70% of the ideas have been already invented. I say this not to discourage people. After all, the probability of “success” (in the sense that a cursory search did not reveal a prior invention) is about the same as top rated batters in north american major league baseball. I say it only to suggest to people that it would be beneficial to do your searching early in the process, if only to avoid spending a significant amount of time (and perhaps money) in what may be a fruitless effort. No one likes that.

I also was interested in the fact that some inventions (in the USA) appear to move from the application stage to the approved and issued stage very quickly (ie. in under 10 months). I suppose I should have expected it, but the answer is simply that if you are prepared to pay the cost – expedited processing can be yours. I guess I did not expect it from a prominent government office (shame on me).

Incidentally, and at long last, CIPO now has a toll free inquiry number. It is 1.866.997.1936. For the hearing impaired, it is 1.866.442.2476. Enjoy!

Another shot at patent reform in the USA

There is an old saying that goes something (almost exactly) like this, “If at first you do not succeed, try try again”.

And such is the case for patent reform in the USA. After several attempts at omnibus reform, legislators in the USA have introduced a bill that has bi-partisan support from both the Democrats and the Republicans as well as support from some industry heavy weights.

Among the notable goals of the bill are the following reforms:

- Improving the patent system by putting in place mechanisms aimed at reducing or eliminating weak or obvious patents.

- Attempting to bring the USA patent system in line with those of other jurisdictions to a “first to file” system as opposed to a “first to invent” system (being sometimes difficult to prove as you can imagine).

- Attempting to deal with situations such as that which RIM faced last year by constraining courts to damage awards based on the patent's “specific contribution over the prior art” (prior art being previously disclosed inventions/ideas). It will go further and increase the burden of proof with respect to whether patent infringement is considered "willful"--a determination that results in tripling the damage award.

- Allowing patents to be challenged within a year of their issuance through a special "post-grant review" process, consisting of a special board within the USA Patent Office, in an effort to provide an alternative for litigation. It would also restrict the scope of the court districts in which patent infringement cases could be filed (there is one particular judge in one particular district in the State of Texas where patent holders like to sue because of the generally favourable treatment they get – just ask Nortel Networks which just lost a patent infringement case there).

- Creating a system by which third parties can submit prior art.

As with any piece of legislation, this one has its detractors and it remains to be seen how much of the bill (if any part of it) will make it onto the books as law. However, the effort seems to have support and would, notwithstanding its drawbacks, significantly improve on the current system. Stay tuned for more developments.

Slowing down spam (literally)

Spam is a horrendous thing. Life would be so much simpler without it, without wading through reams of email correspondence peddling all manner of bizarre wares and services, without spam filters that block the wrong things, without the viruses which inevitably are attached to spam, without the phishing, without the whole mess.

All kinds of solutions have been examined over the years yet the volume of spam continues unabated.

Well, I found out about a new tool in the fight against spam. Courtesy of a Canadian company.

Here is the premise – Spammers like speed, the more email messages they can send in as short a period of time as possible, the better. So, why not slow down the process, just a bit, so that the average user will not be inconvenienced, but the spammer will be affected dramatically.

How does it work? Well, when you send an email message, it goes from your computer to an outgoing email server. That server (and I am simplifying here), through some intermediaries, then asks an incoming email server for permission to send/receive the message. Normally, this takes place in a very short period of time. But Mailchannels of Vancouver has developed a technology that creates a period of lag that serves to slow down the speed of acceptance while maintaining efficiency with respect to legitimate email.

Hopefully it will work well, and for a long period of time.

My book/song/program - my rights

I read an article today from a blog published under the cover of the Berkman Centre for Internet and Society at Harvard Law School. In it the author talks about a discussion with the President of the Recording Industry Association of America (otherwise known as RIAA).

The author of the article, in responding to a point made by the President of the RIAA says:

“Not all music, movies, and academic writings are intellectual property. Not all creative work finds its value in the marketplace. And often it is both legal and morally right to share it without any payment being involved. The norms of the academy are not the norms of the music business, and the academy should resist the call to confuse them.”

This statement astounds me. In my view,  it is false. Intellectual property rights to a work (say a book) arise when the work is created. Those rights are then capable of being waived, assigned, sold – whatever. They are nonetheless rights which are owned by the person who created the work. No one, not the university student, not the teenager, not me, has the right to infringe on those rights.

If the author wishes to publish her work on the Internet and tell all the world, “This book is free, spread it far and wide” one should not mistake that for a statement that there is NO intellectual property in the work, or that the author does not care about her rights with respect to the book. The author has merely chosen (as is her right) to waive the right(s).

Further, one should not confuse moral rights with legal rights (in the sense that there may be a moral obligation to disseminate something – such as a fundamentally important discovery). Even then, in my opinion the individual is under no more moral obligation that the individual inherently possesses. If someone discovers the cure for cancer and decides to sell it to the highest bidder, I may personally find that a bit repugnant but that is only my opinion and has no bearing on whether the person should or should not profit from the discovery. I certainly do not have the right to go and steal the discovery and spread it freely.

Too often, in my opinion, the fundamental basis for copyright is forgotten – if I create something, it is my right to decide what to do with it. And if I decide to sell portions of my rights (in the form of a license to listen to the songs on a CD) and you go and reproduce that CD and spread it across the Internet, you have violated my rights and I have the right to bring an action against you. Again, if I choose to do nothing, that should not be taken as a sign of acquiescence and a mistaken belief that I do not value my rights in some fashion.