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Don't get me wrong, the U.S. government has shown it's willing to co-op private technology for its own ends.

Legally, the US government isn't bound by US patents (at least not in the normal sense of having to pay whatever is demanded or go without). Basically it's the intellectual property version of eminent domain.

http://www.cptech.org/ip/health/cl/us-1498.html identifies the statute which allows *any* Federal agency (not just DoD) to use or authorize a contractor to use (which is what usually happens) a patent or copyright without licensing it. That article also lists a few examples of when the Government has been caught doing this ... even with respect to patented drugs!

The DoD is the agency which most commonly uses patents "for free" rather than paying the Government-determined fee for a compulsory license simply because the DoD gets a mostly-open pass to claim risk to national security if they acknowledged telling their contractor to steal another company's patents. Yeah, that's the DoD indirectly using foreign and domestic patents for free but it is as unethical as when MegaCorp creates an easily-disolvable subsidiary to violate employment laws, etc.

is "would this happen without patents".

I can agree on that. And science studies have shown that progress would "happen" without patents; Promoting Intellectual Discovery: Patents Versus Markets.

Drugs simply won't happen without patents

But, besides the above science link, I totally disagree with this. There are alternatives to pharmaceutical patents. Governments fund drug reseach too. The US's National Institutes of Health's National Cancer Institute spent hundreds of millions of taxpayer dollars developing and testing Taxol, a drug used to treat breast and other cancers. The NCI then sold all the exclusive rights to the use of the research for FDA approval to Bristol-Myers Squibb (BMS). How much did BMS pay? A fraction of NCI's costs. Add how much money did BMS make? In 2000, BMS bought the rights in 1988-9, BMS made almost $1 Billion. Besides that, answering the question Do drug companies do more marketing or research? is answered as thus: Drug industry spends nearly twice as much on marketing than on research and development. Beyond that, Economists say copyright and patent laws are killing innovation; hurting economy. Thomas Jefferson once said "inventions then cannot, in nature, be a subject of property."

Falcon

Researchers at the U.S. Army Medical Research Institute of Infectious Diseases have found a class of drugs that could provide treatment for Ebola and Marburg hemorrhagic fever.

Is this going to be another example of government spending hundreds of Hundreds Millions of Taxpayer Dollars developing a drug only to give it away exclusively to a pharmaceutical business who can then make billions of dollars on the drug if there's an outbreak? That is exactly what the National Cancer Institute or NCI, part of the US federal government's National Institutes of Health did. The NCI spent more than $484 Million [pdf] developing and testing Taxol as a breast cancer drug. The NCI then gave Bristol-Myers Squibb, BMS, exclusive rights to its use. What did BMS pay for those rights? BMS paid $35 Million in royalty payments through 2002. BMS had those exclusive rights for more than 10 years. Guess how much BMS sold Taxol for... In 2000 BMS sold $1.6 Billion, earning between $4 and $5 Million a day.

Falcon

Right, US is so much more civilized than Brasil and that's why Tommy Thompson had threatened Bayer AG to ignore its rights on "Cipro" if it doesn't drop the price: "He might disregard the company's patent, he said, if the company didn't drop its price. "
http://www.cptech.org/ip/health/cl/cipro/americanlawyer012002.html

if I were such an inventor and saw an invention I was the first to invent in Walmart without any compensation to me, I would feel wronged.

You would have first mover advantage. If I were to invent something I could then take my idea to a business like a fab. I go to Fab ABC and say I would like them to manufacture something I invented. Fab ABC asks to see it and I say only if you sign an NDA, non-disclosure agreement. they sign it so I show them my invention. They like it and say they can make it for X dollars. If I agree, okay we sign a contract, if not then I go to Fab XYZ.

After seeing my work Fab XYZ then asks me to invent something that does something else. That's what happens every day, employers pay employees to perform X work, in this case it's inventing things.

However, thinking about areas of science and technology where the cost of entry is high, the need for patent protection becomes clearer. Without sufficient protection, products that require substantial R&D expenditures are less likely to be developed because the developed product can then be produced by competitors. This is most evident in the field of pharmaceuticals, with the constant push-and-shove between developers and generics.

Pharmaceutical patents aren't needed either. There are two facts many people don't know about pharmaceutical businesses. They spend more on marketing than research. And the biggest cost of new drugs is testing to get FDA approval not development. Clinical testing for FDA approval can cost hundreds of millions of dollars.

Falcon

Bristol-Meyer-Squibb - a new york company getting federal help: http://www.cptech.org/ip/health/taxol/

novartis (not even a US company) benefitted from US gov money while developing imatinib:
http://medicynic.com/2008/03/04/generics-on-the-rise-get-glivec-gleevec-in-india/
http://www.thehindubusinessline.com/2006/01/26/stories/2006012601150500.htm

Here is some reading: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bayh-Dole_Act - look specifically at the ritonavir section

Definitely not trolling, but missing the mark. The drugs only cost that much in the US - the rest of the world gets fairly fair prices from US/non-US pharma companies benefiting (sometimes indirectly) from US government funding.

At least one consent decree between the US Government and IBM offers good case law to pursue access to service manuals and parts.

For instance the 1956 consent decree over tabulating equipment (see section VI(c) in particular.

I made a good living for almost 10 years servicing various IBM office machines, buying parts mostly directly from IBM. Before 1956, this was impossible, and after it was pretty much only under threat of further legal action.

It is frustrating that we haven't exercised that right, as demonstrated by the consent decree.

But the facts speak of endemic corruption. There is a revolving door between the pharmaceutical industry and the FDA (and other government agencies). A pattern of industry funding of perks for FDA officials has emerged.

Consider that low-level operatives in the drug industry being afraid of the FDA is not mutually exclusive with the FDA being bought off: for the same reason that mobsters are not sanguine about the police, even when many officers in the department are on the take.

At what point does this end though? You can't own a fact.

You can sue over them though, as the Big sports associations have:

This one covers "Hot scores".

Back in 1996 this was apparently a controversial thing. Info here about owning facts here and on the same site here.

And there are still attempts to sue fantasy sports like this one, but I've never heard of this kind of suit being won by the plaintiffs.

Stranger things have been upheld in court.

At what point does this end though? You can't own a fact.

You can sue over them though, as the Big sports associations have:

This one covers "Hot scores".

Back in 1996 this was apparently a controversial thing. Info here about owning facts here and on the same site here.

And there are still attempts to sue fantasy sports like this one, but I've never heard of this kind of suit being won by the plaintiffs.

Stranger things have been upheld in court.

If you look here , it indicats that Italian courts have decided that if the content is availble in Italy, then Italian courts have jurisdiction.

Well, I am sure BMS also paid about taxes which probably comes to around 20% off their sales profit. As an added bonus, they helped countless cancer patients many of whom are Americans.

A round of chemotherapy with Taxol[pdf] costs thousands of dollars while BMS has been able to produce a dose of Taxol for less than a dollar. And what taxes BMS pays the US only comes from US sales, they don't pay US taxes on their worldwide sales. Not that they should but if you limit earning to only the US for US taxes you're cutting how much tax they do pay. The US could have gotten a better deal by requiring BMS to pay a royalty say of 50% then not taxing the income from the sale of Taxol. Many more American would have been saved if the data needed had been open sourced, or allowed anyone who agreed to pay a royalty to use the data. Then you would of had more than one company fighting for market share by lowering costs.

I'm actually surprised this didn't come sooner. At the very least, I've known MS, IBM and Apple (and should I even mention IP Innovation, the patent troll that sits on several Xerox patents and suing Apple over tabs) have numerous UI patents either cross-licensed or violated by everyone under the sun.

I've seen a dozen or two other patents mentioned on Slashdot over the years and know of a few more cases, as well, so this is not a surprise.
MS has its sticky patent fingers everywhere - UI elements, some parts of RSS news feeds, numerous graphical features (which are probably paid for by card manufacturers), some parts of font rendering (e.g. Cleartype, which can be added into freetype), application embedding, networking, filesystem and probably so many others it would take pages to talk about them all. Some of these patents may be frivolous and probably all but unenforcible outside of Marshall, TX, like the SMB/CIFS ones (which are not used as described in Samba and likely obsolete).

If we really want to have fun, Microsoft badly violates these patents, but then again, so does Linux (but if IBM needed grounds to sue by, there are a couple nasty ones there). I doubt Apple will ever sue over their skinning patent, but that would really suck.

Microsoft doesn't need to sue to kill OSS projects - they could start off by sending a threatening cease-and-desist letters to the projects violating the patents and hope they voluntarily kill the project. If that wasn't enough, they issue a patent infringement lawsuit and get an injunction on the author(s) and have their ISP shut them down. Then its a matter of follow-through and do a cease-and-desist on hosting sites.

    At least MS can't heavy hand it like Paramount did to a shareware author I knew in college (the game was a mac only trek game - I think Net Trek) - they basically sued the living crap out of him (he told me they asked for some ridiculous amount - I think millions of dollars - for use of the license) and then settled out of court including destruction of source and removal of the game from all servers (he was not allowed to talk about the settlement as part of the settlement, so I only know obvious).

Year 2001: 5 (five) US citizens die in Anthrax scare. US government immediately starts proceedings for compulsory license for Cipro, wrestling the patent rights away from foreign company and competitor Bayer. This stance is widely praised as proactive and protecting the precious lives of US citizens.

Year 2007: Tens of thousand of people die in Brazil each year from AIDS because they cannot afford patented medication. Action from Brazil to force compulsory licensing is widely denounced as destroying the worldwide pharma industry, especially by US commentators.

Well...

But more than that, companies have significant incentives not to waste money. Government has no such motivation, as history has shown. Too much spending will kill a company, while too much government spending will keep a segment of the government alive.

Drugs are one of those products that are priced on what will be most profitable for the drug companies. Even if they take more losses that year, they can't just raise their prices, or they will end up losing money.

At the risk of being modded redundant to myself, people should look at this link before drawing conclusions about the development costs of drugs.

      http://www.cptech.org/ip/health/econ/dimasi2003.pd f

And I think that you're being modded a troll is complete incorrect. Moderators, just because you don't agree with someone doesn't make them a troll.

It appears in many studies that R&D costs and clinical studies are the main drivers of cost:
      http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/artic le/2006/12/19/AR2006121901510.html

A comprehensive look (and really interesting read) is here:

      http://www.cptech.org/ip/health/econ/dimasi2003.pd f

Where it goes into great detail about drug development costs.

Market forces should reward success in the face of risk, if that's what's beneficial to the public. How much does it cost to find and prove safe a new drug, versus what percentage of new drugs turn out to be the cure for cancer or something? What payoff is required to take that gamble? Huge probably.

The regulations for drug approval are stacked to the advantage of large pharmaceutical companies. It cost millions, even hundreds of millions to get a drug to approval which means small companies or individuals can't afford to bring a drug to market. However not all drugs are created by businesses, government comes up with some. An excellent example is Taxol. The NCI, National Cancer Institute, spent $183 Million to develop Taxol from the bark of the Pacific Yew tree. They then "sold" the rights to all of the research and testing to Bristol-Myers Squibb, BMS, for $35 Million. It waa estimated BMS made $1 Billion on sales of Taxol in 2000 and sales are only expanding. From that page:

"On September 19, 2000, BMS quoted $6.09 per milligram as the RedBook average wholesale price for Taxol ($182.63 for 30 mg, or $1,826.25 for 300 milligram vials). In August 2000, a generic producer reported that his costs of making Taxol were $.07 per milligram, so the profit margins are very high."

This is one of those issues which pokes pretty close to home. Its also an issue which is best understood by people with some technical background who can unpack the difference between content and the DRM or TPM around it. This means its not easy for non tech consumer groups to defend people's rights on these issues without support and explanations from their local geeky community.

There are plenty of different things we can do - from an email only approach to face to face talking to people.
Tell people and politicians about the kinds of access rights that make invention, creativity, research, humour,
exploration, tinkering, critique, reverse engineering, remixing, adapting and restoring possible.

Get into promoting digital access rights like these:
http://www.adelphicharter.org/

Check out the Access to Knowledge Treaty developed by creators and users:
http://www.cptech.org/a2k/ (link on left Draft Treaty)

Don't be afraid to lobby at the UN level. These things are being promoted through international trade organisations so do check out
what is happening at WIPO and other international forums.
http://www.intgovforum.org/contributions_for_1st_I GF.htm

And Software Freedom Day is on 16 September
http://softwarefreedomday.org/

There are some people working on alternatives.
This is a digital access rights charter
http://www.adelphicharter.org/

This is a digital rights treaty being developed by both creators and users of information
http://www.cptech.org/a2k/
(link on the left for draft of treaty)

This is an interesting article about the NFL and the collection of facts known as sports scores. It seems appropriate to the topic.

Easy. Over 30% of drug company money is spent on marketing. With no patents, all drugs become "generic". No marketing is needed for generic drugs, because they're all the same. That's 30% of costs that drug companies aren't paying, and therefore 30% of costs that aren't passed on to consumers. Consumers now save 30% on their drugs. Tax them 15%, and spend that money on R&D grants. Consumers now save 15% over the original amount, and R&D has doubled.

Yes, that's a very simplified chain of events. However, the people who research this kind of thing are pretty sure that yes, that's about what would happen. If you're interested, I suggest you read up on it (I have only in small amounts, I'm more interested in the other parts of the Pirate Party platform).

I think I've managed to find a draft copy of the treaty proposal (the article was rather light on information in that regard):

http://www.cptech.org/ip/wipo/bt/

I decided to quickly grep through the document for copyright, and I came cross this:

                                                                                          Article 1
                                                    Relation to Other Conventions and Treaties
(1) Nothing in this Treaty shall derogate from existing obligations that Contracting Parties
have to each other under any international, regional or bilateral treaties addressing copyright
or related rights.
(2) Protection granted under this Treaty shall leave intact and shall in no way affect the
protection of copyright or related rights in program material incorporated in broadcasts.
Consequently, no provision of this Treaty may be interpreted as prejudicing such protection.
(3) This Treaty shall not have any connection with, nor shall it prejudice any rights and
obligations under, any other treaties.

Taking a leap of faith here, isn't Copyright embodied within the WCT and Berne Convention (I've only done a few moments' research on this, so I may have that wrong)?

Therefore, this new "Broadcast Orgnisation Protection Treaty" might not actually cause the creative-commons-but-wait-oh-shit nightmare scenario in TFA.

IANAL, of course, so perhaps the interaction between this and the Copyright treaty is more sinister than it seems above.

Thoughts?

Since Boyle first wrote about this last September, I was wondering what others had to say about it. Here's a blog entry from Lawrence Lessig. Not too much written there, but it led me to an EFF page and CPTech action page.

Much of this happened before the Web was mature enough to capture and document the discussion. There's good link in one of the other replies, but here are a few more:

http://www.newsfactor.com/story.xhtml?story_id=283 96
Link to a new item about a lawsuit Novell filed in 2004 alleging OS-level sabotage. It does point out that WordPerfect's main problem was lack of a Windows version, but it also alleges Microsoft indulged in some software sabotage.

http://www3.gripe2ed.com/scoop/comments/2005/10/24 /9814/8315/20?mode=alone;showrate=1
An anonymous posting to Ed Foster's Gripelog by someone who claims his wife was a WP beta tester. Mentions the undocumented API issue but does point out it has never been proven sufficiently to allow companies to sue MS for damages. Blames a lot of the troubles with both MS Word and Wordperfect on memory management issues, which is a valid shot.

But the most interesting is this analysis of the MS anti-trust trial written by Ralph Nader (admittedly no friend of any monopolist, but a guy who does his homework): http://www.cptech.org/ms/harm.html. When you get far enough down in the article, you'll find this quote:

But, as Judge Jackson points out, and as most computer experts know, not all of the quality problems are innocent. In its internal emails and by countless examples, Microsoft has demonstrated that it believes it benefits when consumers cannot make competitor's products work correctly. Microsoft has a range of methods to undermine its competitor's products. When it does not use deliberate sabotage, it can withhold important technical information or refuse to license technology to its competitors, such as when it refused to permit Netscape to distribute a utility to log-on to Internet Service Providers, or when it withholds or unexpectedly changes applications programming interfaces and data file formats.

The reason Novell included intentional sabotage in their suit was becuase of evidence submitted from the anti-trust trial. Again, there are only indirect references to the practice in the trial evidence, not explicit evidence from the OS code itself, but when has anyone who hasn't signed a non-disclosure agreement really gotten a good look at what's under Windows' hood?

Does it pass the test for "beyond resonable doubt" -- probably not. However, "preponderance of evidence" only requires 51% certainty. There are quite a few people who will look at the trial evidence and Microsoft's behavior in other areas and pass that 51% mark.

our only option in the rich countries is to put a pricetag on all our current knowledge and sell that to the emerging economies

There's a (un)official name for this. President Bush just made a laughing stock of himself trying to promote it. In the western hemisphere, it's called the "Free Trade Area for the Americas". In general, whenever you hear about "Free Trade" agreements being negotiated at the global level, you can assume that what's being discussed includes provisions to enforce first world dominance of the intellectual property racket.

A paper. One of many.

I think this explains in part why Yahoo has focused so much effort into getting WIPO to create a new global treaty on webcasting. Unfortunately, that's not good news, and my guess is that few people actually doing technical stuff at Yahoo even understand how messed up the webcasting treaty langauge is, and what it would do to the web.
More on this here: http://www.cptech.org/ip/wipo/bt/

Jamie

I think this explains in part why Yahoo has focused so much effort into getting WIPO to create a new global treaty on webcasting. Unfortunately, that's not good news, and my guess is that few people actually doing technical stuff at Yahoo even understand how messed up the webcasting treaty langauge is, and what it would do to the web.
More on this here: http://www.cptech.org/ip/wipo/bt/

Jamie

with the pharmaceutical industry getting a lot of their basic research performed in public institutions with government grants, and then getting to patent the drug, we're the one's getting screwed. Twice!!

Yeap! BMS, Bristol-Myers Squibb, using Taxol is an excellent example. The NCI, National Cancer Institute, part of the fed's National Health Institute spent $183 million doing the research into developing Taxol from the Pacific Yew tree. Yet they practically gave away to BMS, who makes more than a billion dollars a year on the sale of Taxol, the "rights" to use all of the data from the clinical trials. The US tax payer got ripped off!!! And cancer patients who need Taxol are getting ripped off as well.

more here... http://www.cptech.org/ms/harm.html The documents in the Microsoft trial shed new light on the seemingly endless compatibility and interoperability problems with Windows and Microsoft Office. When Microsoft executives proposed making "running any other browser . . . a jolting experience," they were simply adding yet another example of the "DOS isn't done until Lotus won't run," corporate legacy. Microsoft could never have succeeded as a software company if its intentions to sabotage third party products were known earlier, before consumers and third party developers invested billions of dollars and countless hours around the Windows platform.

BTW, cancer is a symptom of cyanide vitamin deficiency. Have you been eating your buckwheat/lima beans/fruit seeds? Probably not. Anyway, pharm companies don't make any money off buckwheat and OTC vitamins vs chemo treatments. :)

In the case of Taxol BMS is making $Billions even though they didn't pay anything to come up with Taxol. Instead the NCI, National Cancer Institute, investigated and tested it paying around $50,000,000 in doing so. That was taxpayer dollars, so not only did taxpayers pay to develope Taxol they also have to pay BMS Billions more to treat cancer.

At this week's hearing, Dudas said that the patent law should be changed to award a patent to the first person to file a claim. The current rules allow patents to be granted to the first person who devised the invention.
IPIX, anyone?

On second thought .... maybe I should start trawling Windows and M$ Office....

This website explains about the three related patents in mp3. The website mentioned that the patents relate to encoding and not decoding (playback.)

MP3 The Definitive Guide (O'Reilly)

History of MP3. Qouted from this website: "In 1998, Winamp became a free MP3 music player boosting the success of MP3. No licensing fees are required to use an MP3 player."

Real is bullshitting about mp3 playback fees!

I don't care shit if IP is everywhere. So is water, air or electromagnetic waves. What I DO care about is:

• The annoying habit of using the term "property". As if it's the same as a house, book or car. Everybody knows it isn't. For some purposes, it may be convenient to treat it the same, but there is fundamental difference between ordinary property, and "IP". Let's make that distinction, shall we? Finding another term to describe "IP" would be a good start.
• Less annoying is the view of property in general as a natural right, like something that people are born with, or a law of nature. It isn't. "Property" is just an agreement between people ("I was here first, this plot of land is mine"), a legal concept. One that is useful in practice, and feels natural to most people.
• All the troubles it causes (examples in top of this document), barriers it creates to actually getting work done. The need to include copyright statements with everything you write, lawsuits, the hassle of going through EULA's, slowing down innovation, etc, etc, etc. (the list is long)

Nope, if you belong to the human race. It's only a matter of time before plants with patented genes are growing in the Brazilian rainforest (if they aren't already), and once out, there's no seperating these from wild plants. Given time, it won't really be possible to grow crops that don't have geneticly modified/patented genes in them. Ofcourse, this is only one example.

Correct. But that is today. Software development in twenty years will likely look very different.

Will it? It doesn't look that different today than it did 20 years ago. There are some new concepts (OOP, AOP, etc), we have RAD's, but in the end it's still programmers and designers thinking of new algorithms, debugging stuff, and integrating everything into a stable and usable whole.

Consider: None of these arguments is, well, novel - they have thirty years of dust on them. They were all made regarding biotech, too.

I doubt it. Did anyone ever claim the biotech industry is a "cottage industry"? (see the last paragraph) That you barely need any investments to start a new biotech company? That everything underlying biotech innovations in pure maths? That biotech patents pave the way for patents on business methods? That biotech patents could be used to prevent publications of new biotech techniques and not just their use? (program claims) That biotech is pervasive throughout all economic sectors going from grocery shops to space stations, and as such is an "enabling technology" of which hindrances have very broad reaches?

Fortunately, those arguments were declined. Obviously, the predicted cataclysm has not materialized. Today, our biotech industry is basically causing a golden age of medicine - we're creating far more disease cures, far faster, than ever before in history.

To be fair, I've never followed the biotech patent situation. So I just searched for "biotech patents" on Google. The fourth link contains several links which seem to show the controversy is still far from settled. So does the sixth and the eighth. There are of course other views as well (such as the tenth link), but claiming everything is happy happy joy joy with no downsides seems just a tad misleading.

There's also a bit about it in the recent FTC report on patents and innovation. They note that the fact that biotech includes quite a bit of consequential innovation (as opposed to traditional pharmaceuticals) causes some problems. You are presumably aware of the fact that software development is almost nothing but consequential innovation (and lots of reuse as well). The solution proposed by the panel members regarding biotech is what is currently already done in the software world: extensive cross licensing. Of course, you need a lot of patents to be able to join that game.

The industry will become more selective about filing software patents. It must, since absurdities like patents on hash tables will never be useful to anyone. Even large companies cannot afford to throw away vast sums of money on patent portfolios that are not enforceable.

Of course they are useful for those companies! They are strategic assets, used as trading cards or litigation tokens. Enforceability is generally not even a concern, as many small companies can simply not afford the litigation costs (if you have the choice between a $50,000 license or a $2,000,000 lawsuit, what do you pick?)

By approximately 2020, we will have an incredibly well-documented record of the state of software development - both in the form of 50 years of programming journals, and in the form of all previously-filed software patent applications.

And there will be tons more of programming legacy which is not documented in this way at all, but just available as source code (which is also a publication, given that source code

First of all, I did not say, "one click option for download". What I referred to was a one-click option for purchase, which is covered by a patent owned by Amazon.

Secondly, what you are describing, a "one click option for download", is not a URL, but a hyperlink. A URL is an address of a resource, while a hyperlink is the object you click on to download the resource.

Furthermore, the hyperlink is patented.

Now do you see how difficult it is to write software without violating someone's intellectual property? It doesn't matter whether you are a private company or an open source project, you can still be taken to court if you violate patent law. Why do you think that GNU doesn't use GIFs? Here's a hint:

If we released such a program, Unisys and IBM might think it wiser (for public relations reasons) not to sue a charity like the FSF. They could instead sue the users of the program, including the companies who redistribute GNU software. We feel it would not be responsible behavior for us to set up this situation.

No, I'm not twelve but these "points" you seem to be attempting sure have me convinced you are.

May I remind you that you're the one who can't seem to use polite, logical arguments backed by evidence to refute my supposedly jejune "points".

Now anytime you take tax dollars and redistribute it to people for specefic services they might not be able to afford, it is called welfare

As for patents on drugs, we have compulsory 3rd-party licensing for certain drugs. Seeing as we extended patent protection from 17 to 20 years a decade ago, and seeing as we also finance the drug company's research here to the tune of hundreds of millions of dollars each year from the public purse in direct financial aid / grants, why wouldn't we want something in return? They are still guaranteed a profit.

On the question of Cipro, Bayer admitted it was unable to meet emergency demand in the case of a bio-terrorist problem, and both Canada and the US had indicated that they would, in such a case, authorize other manufacturers to produce the drug. And it was 3 years ago - old news (October 19th, 2001). So much for "pirated" drugs.

By the way, such an action is permitted under international treaties.

In the states, the relevant law is 28 USC 1498 http://www.cptech.org/ip/health/cl/us-1498.html, giving the US government the absolute right to use any patent or invention.

Authorization under the NAFTA trade agreement is article 1709 http://www.cptech.org/ip/health/cl/nafta.html

In the end, Bayer backed down when they realized the public-relations fiasco it was turning out to be. The government had the right, provided they paid compensation, which they were going to do.

So your "facts" are both out-of-date and just plain wrong fromn a legal/trade/treaty point of view (sort of like Bush's WMDs, which must be because the Iraqis have the Romulan Cloaking Device)

Now anytime you take tax dollars and redistribute it to people for specefic services they might not be able to afford, it is called welfare

As for patents on drugs, we have compulsory 3rd-party licensing for certain drugs. Seeing as we extended patent protection from 17 to 20 years a decade ago, and seeing as we also finance the drug company's research here to the tune of hundreds of millions of dollars each year from the public purse in direct financial aid / grants, why wouldn't we want something in return? They are still guaranteed a profit.

On the question of Cipro, Bayer admitted it was unable to meet emergency demand in the case of a bio-terrorist problem, and both Canada and the US had indicated that they would, in such a case, authorize other manufacturers to produce the drug. And it was 3 years ago - old news (October 19th, 2001). So much for "pirated" drugs.

By the way, such an action is permitted under international treaties.

In the states, the relevant law is 28 USC 1498 http://www.cptech.org/ip/health/cl/us-1498.html, giving the US government the absolute right to use any patent or invention.

Authorization under the NAFTA trade agreement is article 1709 http://www.cptech.org/ip/health/cl/nafta.html

In the end, Bayer backed down when they realized the public-relations fiasco it was turning out to be. The government had the right, provided they paid compensation, which they were going to do.

So your "facts" are both out-of-date and just plain wrong fromn a legal/trade/treaty point of view (sort of like Bush's WMDs, which must be because the Iraqis have the Romulan Cloaking Device)

Corporations have been writing licenses of this sort for a long time - some of the worst are the ones that come packaged with software or that are hidden in 1 pt. font on websites.

They're a little dated, but for more information, check out these links at the Consumer Project on Technology:
UCITA
Questionable Licenses

And here's a link to an old /. article on the subject.

Slashdot | Questionable EULA's

Corporations have been writing licenses of this sort for a long time - some of the worst are the ones that come packaged with software or that are hidden in 1 pt. font on websites.

They're a little dated, but for more information, check out these links at the Consumer Project on Technology:
UCITA
Questionable Licenses

And here's a link to an old /. article on the subject.

Slashdot | Questionable EULA's

Corporations have been writing licenses of this sort for a long time - some of the worst are the ones that come packaged with software or that are hidden in 1 pt. font on websites.

They're a little dated, but for more information, check out these links at the Consumer Project on Technology:
UCITA
Questionable Licenses

And here's a link to an old /. article on the subject.

Slashdot | Questionable EULA's

Not necessarily. At some point, they're going to start using tamper resistant hardware. Good luck mod-chipping that. The only hole you can actually count on, is digital-to-analogue-to-digital conversion, to get data out of your "trusted" box and into an ordinary computer. That might be fine for ebook pirates, but it's going to be one hell of a PITA for daily life.

Rather than planning to spend tens or hundreds of hours on work-arounds when this happens, it would make sense to donate tens or hundreds of hours of your wages to the EFF or similar organisations which are working to prevent this problem from prevailing in the first place.

I think the issue is that she didn't just say "the company sucks," she registered "thecompany.com" for herself and put up her web page there. So if PETA had beaten mcdonalds.com in registering that domain name, it would still take you to a protest site today.

I know you are using this as a hypothetical, situation, but, in fact, PETA was involved in just that situation, but from the opposite position. A satirist beat them to peta.org (or peta.com -- I do not recall all the details), and created a "People for the Easting of Tasty Animals" site up at peta.org. PETA brought a complaint under the US Anti-cybersquatting act. The site owner claimed that, as a parody, the site was protected. The federal court agreed with PETA's claims that their trademark was being used and diluted, and had the domain name transferred. Some details are available here

According to NTK

...with yet another shortcut being taken by the Evil Intellectual Property Developers at the World IP Organisation's copyright committee. Here's the scene: the IPers want to create a bundle of new IP rights: not for creative artists, but for those who package and broadcast their works on air or online. The idea is that a broadcaster can record a public domain or Creative Commons licensed work, claim "FIXATION RIGHTS" to it, and retain control of that expression for the next twenty years. Did I say twenty? I'm sorry - that's what they used to want. Now it's *fifty* years, to match Sonny Bono inflation in copyright extensions. WIPO thought this was a done deal (after all, who could complain about more rights?) - until a few of the developing countries and those pesky open source advocates started taking note. Developing countries: not so keen on yet another round of having their native cultures air-lifted out of their control. OSS folk: not thrilled about a WIP definition of "broadcasting" that could include docs, files, or executables. Could you take a GPL'd program, "broadcast" it on the Net, and then claim exclusive copyright control on that expression? No-one at WIPO knew. The end result: not for the first or last time, the developing world teamed up with the free software folk to backburn the proposal. Well, all except Kenya, who went on about how they'd passed a law banning people from taking photos of TV broadcasts to prove what a good IP world citizen they were. Better to back the Bitching Boys than the Fat Cats on this particular track, we think...

another Jamie Love song

wish they all could be non-infringing

According to NTK

...with yet another shortcut being taken by the Evil Intellectual Property Developers at the World IP Organisation's copyright committee. Here's the scene: the IPers want to create a bundle of new IP rights: not for creative artists, but for those who package and broadcast their works on air or online. The idea is that a broadcaster can record a public domain or Creative Commons licensed work, claim "FIXATION RIGHTS" to it, and retain control of that expression for the next twenty years. Did I say twenty? I'm sorry - that's what they used to want. Now it's *fifty* years, to match Sonny Bono inflation in copyright extensions. WIPO thought this was a done deal (after all, who could complain about more rights?) - until a few of the developing countries and those pesky open source advocates started taking note. Developing countries: not so keen on yet another round of having their native cultures air-lifted out of their control. OSS folk: not thrilled about a WIP definition of "broadcasting" that could include docs, files, or executables. Could you take a GPL'd program, "broadcast" it on the Net, and then claim exclusive copyright control on that expression? No-one at WIPO knew. The end result: not for the first or last time, the developing world teamed up with the free software folk to backburn the proposal. Well, all except Kenya, who went on about how they'd passed a law banning people from taking photos of TV broadcasts to prove what a good IP world citizen they were. Better to back the Bitching Boys than the Fat Cats on this particular track, we think...

another Jamie Love song

wish they all could be non-infringing

http://www.twnside.org.sg/title/pushes.htm

http://www.cptech.org/ip/health/trade/msf05012002. html

http://www.commondreams.org/headlines01/0419-01.ht m

"In more modern terms, if you have two theories which both explain the observed facts then you should use the simplest until more evidence comes along."

After Ralph Nader wrote MS a letter in January 2002 urging them to pay a substantial dividend you'd think other reflexive MS critics would applaud the move. Not the case here, where anything they do, no matter what, is the urging of Satan. This site can be a cesspool of shallow thought sometimes.