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But what if you build the time machine after the patent expires and travel back in time to the present day? I think my head is going to explode.

Now this would, by extension, be covered by Art. 5ter of the Paris Agreement. The article basically states that if you are living in country A, where some thing is not patented, and use the thing on a ship, vehicle or airplane, your ship, vehicle or airplane is allowed to operate temporarily in country B, where the thing is patented, without violating the patent.

It should be possible to build a case arguing the same exception for time machines. (Disclaimer: IANYL. This is not legal advice. No Laws of Physics in general and Laws of Thermodynamics or Relativity in particular were violated while writing this post. Seriously.)

I have a sneaking suspicion that you are right - this isn't about the gene itself, but how to isolate/observe, etc. That process could very well be an invention

Everything I read says the patent is on the gene.
http://www.wipo.int/wipo_magazine/en/2006/04/article_0003.html

"Myriad holds U.S. patents 5747282 and 5710001 on the isolated DNA coding for a BRCA-1 polypeptide and on a screening method."

Ah, AND on a screening method. Patents on human genes (isolated DNA coding) make me confused; wary.

A web page is a creative work of the author(s). Modifying that work without their permission is a copyright infringement which is tortuous. Most people use "illegal" for things that are contrary to criminal or civil law - hence "illegally".

The law may be an ass but I think the GP is correct here in his synopsis.

If an author chooses to place ads in their page that is their prerogative - they are not obliged to give away their work for free, even on teh internetz. You have no legal remedy to remove the ads in order to view the content without annoyance.

This is embodied in the Berne Convention (which has about 160 signatories IIRC), from the summary ( http://www.wipo.int/treaties/en/ip/berne/summary_berne.html ):

(2) The minimum standards of protection relate to the works and rights to be protected, and the duration of the protection:

        (a) As to works, the protection must include "every production in the literary, scientific and artistic domain, whatever may be the mode or form of its expression" (Article 2(1) of the Convention).

        (b) Subject to certain permitted reservations, limitations or exceptions, the following are among the rights which must be recognized as exclusive rights of authorization:

                * the right to translate,
                * the right to make adaptations and arrangements of the work,
[...]

                * the right to make reproductions in any manner or form (with the possibility of a contracting State to permit, in certain special cases, reproduction without authorization provided that the reproduction does not conflict with the normal exploitation of the work and does not unreasonably prejudice the legitimate interests of the author, and with the possibility of a contracting State to provide, in the case of sound recordings of musical works, for a right to equitable remuneration),

[...] /IANA Copyright Lawyer, but I pretend to be one on Slashdot. This is not legal advice. /

But those are not the reforms the RIAA is talking about. They want Canada and other countries to adopt anti-circumvention laws similar to the DMCA, which would make it illegal to defeat DRM for legitimate purposes like those I listed above, and are busy spreading the usual misinformation in order to achieve their goal.

It's not just RIAA that wants other countries to adopt DMCA style laws. The DMCA in the US was pretty much constructed completely out of the WTC and the WPPT (with the exception of penalties). Both are WIPO treaties and you can find out more about them there.

It's actually quite interesting. RIAA and the MPAA seem to be the ones taking all the attention but international treaties were negotiated a while back and that would seem to be the real driving forces behind the DMCA style laws in other countries that keep getting shot down.

Something that most people don't realize or understand is that ALL US copyright laws were made and changed pursuant to international treaties after the mid 1800's. There are a number of people who want to think it was because of Disney but the reality of the situation is different. Disney may have gotten the rest of the world to create and sign the treaties, they certainly encourages are participating in them, but with treaties in place, most of our laws will be honored in other countries.

BTW, thats one of the reasons why the US was able to convince the swedes to fuck with the Pirate bay and why we got someone extradited from Australia over copyright infringement. It's also why other countries attempt to implement DMCA style laws. The DMCA was modeled directly from the WCT and WPPT wipo treaties.

Maybe I'm wrong, but isn't the United States part of WIPO? Or is that meaningless?

I'm wondering if that part of the summary is just a troll. "Astonishingly, the collection is covered by numerous copyright laws, according to the legal page" says the summary. Looking at the only legal page I can find: http://www.wdl.org/en/legal.html it says:

About Copyright and the Collections

Content found on the WDL Web site is contributed by WDL partners. Copyright questions about partner content should be directed to that partner. When publishing or otherwise distributing materials found in a WDL partner's collections, the researcher has the obligation to determine and satisfy domestic and international copyright law or other use restrictions.

You can find out more information about copyright law in the World Intellectual Property Organization's member states at http://www.wipo.int/about-ip/en/.

Maybe I've missed another page or something, but that just seems like a standard bit of CYA, not an attempt to extend copyrights by millennia.

Scratch that. It's actually WO/2005/015989. This one also has no granted patents.

As far as I can tell, no patents have been granted from WO2004/003697 which seems to be the most likely application in question.

I think it's actually WO/2003/096799. That's the only one I could find that talked about breeding. It looks like they filed patent applications in the US, the EU, Australia, and Canada. The European application was abandoned, and the others are still pending (you can see them on the "National Phase" tab).

Right on.

However, I just interupted my extended fight with naval gazing and participated in a thought experiment where I looked at some of the countries who have signed onto but not ratified or implemented the WIPO treaties. Look at the contracting parties sections.

Anyways, the interesting thing is that the US ratified and implemented the DMCA laws pretty early in the game but the EU and countries like England, Germany, Denmark, Sweden, Switzerland, and so on who's population seem to think the US is pushing it's laws on them, actually signed on before the US has, they just haven't ratified it or implemented the laws yet.

To me, that just shows how much of a driving force the treaties actually are with some countries being more resistant to it then others. Anyways, I thought it was an interesting look into what drives the push of these type of laws.

Right on.

However, I just interupted my extended fight with naval gazing and participated in a thought experiment where I looked at some of the countries who have signed onto but not ratified or implemented the WIPO treaties. Look at the contracting parties sections.

Anyways, the interesting thing is that the US ratified and implemented the DMCA laws pretty early in the game but the EU and countries like England, Germany, Denmark, Sweden, Switzerland, and so on who's population seem to think the US is pushing it's laws on them, actually signed on before the US has, they just haven't ratified it or implemented the laws yet.

To me, that just shows how much of a driving force the treaties actually are with some countries being more resistant to it then others. Anyways, I thought it was an interesting look into what drives the push of these type of laws.

Right on.

However, I just interupted my extended fight with naval gazing and participated in a thought experiment where I looked at some of the countries who have signed onto but not ratified or implemented the WIPO treaties. Look at the contracting parties sections.

Anyways, the interesting thing is that the US ratified and implemented the DMCA laws pretty early in the game but the EU and countries like England, Germany, Denmark, Sweden, Switzerland, and so on who's population seem to think the US is pushing it's laws on them, actually signed on before the US has, they just haven't ratified it or implemented the laws yet.

To me, that just shows how much of a driving force the treaties actually are with some countries being more resistant to it then others. Anyways, I thought it was an interesting look into what drives the push of these type of laws.

Actually, it's not the media companies.

The problem is that the last two WIPO treaties require DMCA style laws. Pretty much any country that doesn't implement those will end up being passed over in other crap that the international community does. It will hurt trade and cause financial issues.

The American DMCA provisions are more or less taken straight from the requirements of the WIPO Copyright Treaty or WTC and the WPPT or WIPO Performances and Phonograms Treaty with the exception of penalties and a few extremes. Canada signed onto both of the treaties on 12/22/1997. Focusing on the media companies will only result in disappointed losses in the fight. You need to get the government (your local government as well as other country's governments) to change the treaties and international obligations to them to reflect the will of your people.

You or I or anyone can complain about Disney or Warner bros or whatever. They are as powerful as they are in this fight because they are attempting to get the governments of countries to make good on treaties that almost all countries in the world have signed an obligation to. It's the reason that the pirate bay just got into trouble, it's the reason why their laws are being changed and why charges were being brought against a group of people on the behalf of people and corporations that most likely don't even have offices in the country.

Sure, keep believing media corps are evil. I'm not asking you or anyone else to embrace them. I'm asking people to actually pay attention to where this crap is coming from so that we don't dick around with seemingly related issues that end up being a dead end. The treaties need to be adjusted-changes-destroyed-whatever before this threat goes away. When I can say Canada or any other country has to pass a law because a treaty they signed obligated them to, no matter how much it looks like I am the bad guy, I'm more or less only reminding those countries of their obligations.

It would be fun to form a mass co-op type business, pool everyone's cash and buy up as many band contracts as possible just to keep them off the major labels.

While it would be fun, that's all it would be "for fun". Or at least until the right crap was changed out. Even if "big media" had no clients, they could/would still push for the treaties to be implemented.

Actually, it's not the media companies.

The problem is that the last two WIPO treaties require DMCA style laws. Pretty much any country that doesn't implement those will end up being passed over in other crap that the international community does. It will hurt trade and cause financial issues.

The American DMCA provisions are more or less taken straight from the requirements of the WIPO Copyright Treaty or WTC and the WPPT or WIPO Performances and Phonograms Treaty with the exception of penalties and a few extremes. Canada signed onto both of the treaties on 12/22/1997. Focusing on the media companies will only result in disappointed losses in the fight. You need to get the government (your local government as well as other country's governments) to change the treaties and international obligations to them to reflect the will of your people.

You or I or anyone can complain about Disney or Warner bros or whatever. They are as powerful as they are in this fight because they are attempting to get the governments of countries to make good on treaties that almost all countries in the world have signed an obligation to. It's the reason that the pirate bay just got into trouble, it's the reason why their laws are being changed and why charges were being brought against a group of people on the behalf of people and corporations that most likely don't even have offices in the country.

Sure, keep believing media corps are evil. I'm not asking you or anyone else to embrace them. I'm asking people to actually pay attention to where this crap is coming from so that we don't dick around with seemingly related issues that end up being a dead end. The treaties need to be adjusted-changes-destroyed-whatever before this threat goes away. When I can say Canada or any other country has to pass a law because a treaty they signed obligated them to, no matter how much it looks like I am the bad guy, I'm more or less only reminding those countries of their obligations.

It would be fun to form a mass co-op type business, pool everyone's cash and buy up as many band contracts as possible just to keep them off the major labels.

While it would be fun, that's all it would be "for fun". Or at least until the right crap was changed out. Even if "big media" had no clients, they could/would still push for the treaties to be implemented.

In almost all cases, the only people who actually benefit from access to particular data are a small handful of specialists. Could someone explain to me why this is a real problem and not just something that people with too much time on their hands (and who would never actually read, let alone understand, real research results) get worked up about?

I'm a poor medical student, but a medical student with--quite frequently--interdisciplinary ideas. I can't tell you the number of times I have been interested in pursuing a subject for independent research and have been stymied or effectively stopped in my tracks because of my lack of ability to pay or lack of online access to experimental data and results. You might think that modern science is highly specialized and, for most bleeding-edge topics, you're probably right. In these cases, the affected researchers can all afford the one or two subscriptions they need to stay up to date. However, in overlapping areas, non-specialists (or specialists in other fields) might have have a unique perspective and possibly insightful findings to add. What harm could be done by letting them take a look?

Take for example one of my hair-brain ideas. There is a disease called Pellagra, which is caused by diets deficient in certain amino acids. These amino acids are lacking in corn. In the United States, corn is, by far, the largest cash crop. Now, diets in the U.S. are varied enough to where modern Americans do not get Pellagra, but this isn't the case in developing nations, where Pellagra can sadly be endemic. So, my idea is this: why not introduce conservative substitutions into the genetic sequence of the gene encoding the major structural protein of corn ( zein ) in such a way as to make corn a (more) complete amino acid food source? By doing this, you'd be turning one of the world's most abundant and cheap foodstuffs into an effective cure for a common, debilitating disease.

Now, to me, as an outsider to Agriculture, this seems like a rather basic idea. I was convinced that someone had to have tried something similar to this. But you'd be surprised. I have yet to find a single paper that has ever attempted such a thing. Almost all of them focus on crop yields or the use of zein in commercial products. Now, maybe (for reasons unbeknown to me) my idea is untenable such that, people in the field have never given it a thought. But what if that isn't the case? What if the leaders of the field (or at least the emergent behavior of the scientists and scientific institutions) is pushing so hard in one direction that an obvious area for research or advancement was overlooked? Let's hope it's not the latter...

Regardless it's a travesty how petty scientific institutions are in this regard considering how often they talk to the public about high-minded ideals when extolling the virtues of public funding of Science. This information should be available to all: specialists and non-specialists alike.

-Grym

P.S. Oh yeah, and in case, any of you were wondering. Somebody already patented the general idea described in my post. So don't get any wild ideas about trying to use it to help the poor, now! (/facepalm)

What terms are those? Terms that would be considered parts of the DMCA?

If so, your actually wrong, the DMCA is the response to the WCT and http://www.wipo.int/treaties/en/ip/wppt/ >wppt WIPO treaties. The EU signed onto these and directed the EU countries to adopt them. This is probably what your talking about.

What terms are those? Terms that would be considered parts of the DMCA?

If so, your actually wrong, the DMCA is the response to the WCT and http://www.wipo.int/treaties/en/ip/wppt/ >wppt WIPO treaties. The EU signed onto these and directed the EU countries to adopt them. This is probably what your talking about.

"In Russia, which is not a signatory to the Berne Convention"

Uhhhh. No. That is incorrect.

The Berne Convention also became effective for Russia on March 13, 1995.[51]

Contracting Parties > Berne Convention > Russian Federation > Details

These idiots are still tiring to just use credit card numbers stored in people phones.
Like this isn't a security disaster just waiting to happen. If someone get a CC number tied to someone checking account, they could take 10's of 1000's of dollars from just one individual.

There is no way to limit ones exposure of the vulnerability like paper money does.

With paper money, if I loose my wallet, they only get the $200 or what ever I just took from my ATM and no more. But with the cards, sky's the limit.
If I have a CC card with a 10K limit they can take it all, and leave me on the hook!

http://www.decash.com/ is my solution.
http://www.wipo.int/pctdb/en/wo.jsp?wo=2005048082 my patent.

This limits one liability, not with legalize but technology, where cash is transferred to the phone like real money. It's done like you would with an ATM! If the phone is compromised, they only get the cash loaded onto the phone and more more.

Um, I could be wrong, but I thought that was already the case ... ? I.e., patents must be filed in every country for which a potential patentholder desires patent protection. US patents are no good in Japan, for instance -- a separate Japanese patent must be applied for. The World Intellectual Property Organization (WIPO, website here) is an attempt at streamlining this process to some degree.

Cheers,

I believe that only copyright is international.

There's an international Patent Cooperation Treaty to which 139 countries are signatories. One learns something new everyday!

http://www.wipo.int/pct/en/treaty/about.htm
http://www.wipo.int/treaties/en/ShowResults.jsp?lang=en&treaty_id=6

I believe that only copyright is international.

There's an international Patent Cooperation Treaty to which 139 countries are signatories. One learns something new everyday!

http://www.wipo.int/pct/en/treaty/about.htm
http://www.wipo.int/treaties/en/ShowResults.jsp?lang=en&treaty_id=6

That's a gross misunderstanding of how both copyright and creativity work. You cannot copyright an idea - in fact, it is very specifically written into the Berne Convention that only specific implementations of an idea can be copyrighted. Don't take my word for that, though - look it up yourself. You'll find it laid out in Article 2, with subsection 3 containing a statement protecting the rights of others to create derivative works: http://www.wipo.int/treaties/en/ip/berne/trtdocs_wo001.html#P85_10661 [wipo.int]

Yes, and it's been upheld in courts that something as small as a few notes of music can be enough to constitute infringement. Things have gotten ridiculously out of hand.

I still don't see anyone giving any good reason why these monopolies should be granted for such ridiculous amounts of time.

Disney may be very protective of its trademarks, but there are plenty of other adaptations of fairy tales out there. So that doesn't actually hold true.

And why was Disney able to create its classics? Because those fairy tales weren't copyrighted, so Disney just did what they wanted with them, with no restrictions or payment needed. That doesn't hold true for practically anything created in the last 70 years or so.

"The government shouldn't be handing out monopolies as it does now because they are not benefiting the public, but they are certainly restricting people from building upon the ideas that have come before."

That's a gross misunderstanding of how both copyright and creativity work. You cannot copyright an idea - in fact, it is very specifically written into the Berne Convention that only specific implementations of an idea can be copyrighted. Don't take my word for that, though - look it up yourself. You'll find it laid out in Article 2, with subsection 3 containing a statement protecting the rights of others to create derivative works: http://www.wipo.int/treaties/en/ip/berne/trtdocs_wo001.html#P85_10661

"Disney being the classic example of a company that made its fortune on the work of those who came before, and then proceeded to ensure that none would come after."

Disney may be very protective of its trademarks, but there are plenty of other adaptations of fairy tales out there. So that doesn't actually hold true.

Lol.. Do you really think it is the **AA's and not the WIPO treaties that require the protection to be there?

Don't confuse the cheerleaders for the players in the game.

Lol.. Do you really think it is the **AA's and not the WIPO treaties that require the protection to be there?

Don't confuse the cheerleaders for the players in the game.

Assume for the moment that the method in question is both new and non-obvious.

They are claiming a patent on:

A method of filling an order for a sandwich comprising: toasting a bread component for the sandwich for less than about 1 minute in response to the order in a first heating device; and initiating and completing the heating of a sandwich filling for the sandwich from about 4OF or less to about 120F or more in a second heating device, while the bread component is heating, in response to the order.

Translating from patentese into plain English, they are claiming a patent on:

Take an order,
toast bread quickly,
heat the cold stuff while bread toasts.

Assume for the moment that the method in question is both new and non-obvious.

Assume for the moment BITE ME.
New and non-obvious my ass.

Almost no one around here seriously objects to patents on new physical devices. Not many here even object to physical process patents on physically transforming something like ore into elemental metal. But why do most patent lawyers have this pathological compulsion to promote and defend the patentability of anything they can commit to paper? Almost all of the claims filed here are obvious, under any sane stander of review. Almost all of the claims filed here are not truly novel, under any sane stander of review. And while yes, this is at least a claim on a physical process of physical sandwich making, I would say that "transformation of an article to a different state or thing" should be a substantive requirement. Placing bread on top of ham&cheese then flipping it over is hardly novel, it is not particularly non-obvious having been endlessly "invented" by common cooks and in home kitchens across the globe, and I'd say it fails to meet any reasonable substantive meaning of "transforming an article to a different state or thing".

Most people here are not anti-patent, but they do have a problem with patents becomming some horror movie monster escaping out of control from its box and devouring everything in sight. People here are largely programmers, and have a particular objection to patents on math - where "patents on math" means any and all "computer implemented inventions" lacking significant physical "post solution activity". Note that it was the US Supreme Court who declared that algorithms were unpatentable, and that "insignificant post solution activity" cannot be used to draft an unpatentable algorithm into a patentable process.

Computers cannot implement any invention. Computers can only calculate. Any and all software is nothing more than algorithm, nothing more than math. If you happen to include a computer in some novel non-obvious device you invent, fine you can have a patent on that new object. The incidental presence of a computer does not remove the patentability of an otherwise patenentable new object. If you incidentally make use of a computer to calculate some information during some novel non-obvious physical process to physically transform some physical article to a substanitively different physical state or substanitively different physical thing, fine you can have a patent on that new physical process. The incidental use of a computer does not remove the patentability of an otherwise patenentable physical process. The US Supreme court has said that any and all algorithm are treated as part of familiar art as far as patent purposes. For patent purposes any possible software must be treated as familiar prior art. You can make use of a computer in an invention, but computers cannot implement any invention, not ever. Computers can only implement math and mathematical algorithms. Insignificant post solution physical activity does not change software into a patentable process.

-

I'm safe as well. None of my sandwich-making starts with taking a customer order.

Please, don't take this personally. I know you're just making a post on Slashdot. But why can't you even read one article about this before you make useless guesses?

After two minutes of Googling, I found this diamond in the rough, a patent application secretively titled "STIRLING ENGINE THERMAL SYSTEM IMPROVEMENTS", submitted by Dean Kamen. Though you may dislike the Segway, and I can't blame you for it, the technology came from his iBot wheel chair, which is the closest thing I've seen to offering someone who doesn't have use of their legs a chance at full mobility. This has improved the lives of thousands of people. Unless you're an aid worker or another genius inventor, your comparable contributions to society are far less, without even touching his more traditional medical inventions.

So, with all due respect, before you pat yourself on the back for shooting down an idea you are totally ignorant of, stop typing and read about the idea first. Then, if you have something useful to say, the world will be glad to read about your idea, and then reply.

You can repeat this as often as you like, but it's just not true. The US ratified the WCT *after* passing the DMCA, not before. It had signed the treaty before, indicating non-binding support for it, but it had not ratified it, so it was not obligated to do anything.

Common, the slightest bit of reference on your part could have avoided this. Even Wikipedia has us listed as being bound by the WIPO treaties in 1996 where the DMCA was in 1998. The two WIPO treaties (and yes, 2 of them, not just the copyright treaty) were employed and discussed in 1996, congress ratified it on October 21 1998. (look up treaty # 105-17 at http://thomas.loc.gov/home/treaties/treaties.html ) The DMCA was signed into law on October 28 1998. It isn't uncommon to make the laws concerning the treaties as the treaties are being considered because most of the times the treaties specify the law that is required as well as goes through the same discussion as to why provisions of the treaties are valid or not just the same as provisions of laws. It is obvious that we were passing the law for the treaty and technically, when we ratified the treaty before the law was actually law... Well, I should have to go on.

Yes, this requires some sort of protection of DRM, but the DMCA goes far further. Look at the last four words: "or permitted by law". That means that fair use could trump DRM, but in the DMCA, it does not. There's nothing there to prohibit software that breaks DRM, but the DMCA does that.

This isn't a trick question but what do you think the words pertaining to "this Treaty or the Berne Convention and that restrict acts" actually mean. Here is a hint, Two other treaties have created a set laws or the obligations for laws in which must be followed. If you would look at the Performances and Phonographs treaty, the WPPT, Tou will find the clause under sections 18 that says

Contracting Parties shall provide adequate legal protection and effective legal remedies against the circumvention of effective technological measures that are used by performers or producers of phonograms in connection with the exercise of their rights under this Treaty and that restrict acts, in respect of their performances or phonograms, which are not authorized by the performers or the producers of phonograms concerned or permitted by law.

Now I will admit that the US law goes a little further and carries the effective technological measures anti circumvention into more then performances and audio/video recordings to all covered copyrighted works but it isn't like it is totally unfounded. You have to remember, the DMCA was the result of not just the copyright treaty but the Performances and phonograhs treay too. The short title of the law is actually, `WIPO Copyright and Performances and Phonograms Treaties Implementation Act of 1998': I don't really know how long that link will be available ( I have seen links to Thomas.loc.gov last while some break within a day) so if it doesn't show up, just look for H.R.2281.

The US didn't need to do *anything* until it had ratified the WCT, but instead it chose to go far beyond the requirements of the treaty. Don't blame others for your bad decisions.

Lol.. You know, often you don't have to stop for a red light until you reach the intersection. But the reality is that when people know something is inevitable, they will prepare for it somewhere along the way so it is viable at the time it is necessary. Sure, some don't, but some do. Both WIPO treaties were going to pass ratification. The DMCA wasn't created in isolation of the WIPO treaties, it was created in tandem with it. If you look at th

This is true, precisely because of what's being said above - that a great deal of the energy that goes into compressing air is then lost as heat when the compressed air cools down. It's why short term compressed air storage (such as for truck brakes) are heavily insulated, to try and contain that energy.

This is one of the problems with Hydrogen power that they've been veeeerry quiet about (although all that Hydrogen jibba jabba seems have quieted down precisely when us Battery EV enthusiasts said it would, it's never been anything but a smoke screen to divert funding from actual practical non-oil-based transport. /rant) - a great deal of energy is lost in the process of compressing the hydrogen for high pressure storage.

I'm thinking this boy is damn good a plagiarizing more than anything else. http://www.wipo.int/pctdb/en/fetch.jsp?LANG=ENG&DBSELECT=PCT&SERVER_TYPE=19-10&SORT=41238067-KEY&TYPE_FIELD=256&IDB=0&IDOC=1349795&C=10&ELEMENT_SET=B&RESULT=1&TOTAL=1&START=1&DISP=25&FORM=SEP-0/HITNUM,B-ENG,DP,MC,AN,PA,ABSUM-ENG&SEARCH_IA=US2006007290&QUERY=(WO%2Fwo2007040594)+ http://www.ip2biz.com/Offerings/ProofCoProjects.asp#ThreeDSolarCells http://www.gatech.edu/newsroom/release.html?id=1337

Wikipedia has a petty good analysis of most/some of them. Wiki tends to get somewhat biased and noteworthy sometimes so here are a few other sources with he raw language of the treaties.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Agreement_on_Trade-Related_Aspects_of_Intellectual_Property_Rights
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/World_Intellectual_Property_Organization
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Berne_Convention_for_the_Protection_of_Literary_and_Artistic_Works

A problem is going to be that I don't know for sure if I can (have the skills and patients) make you understand them. I barely understand most of them myself and I'm not in a position to teach on them. You should be able to get them on your own though. Remember, the treaties usually don't have the text of a law in them. They will say a country has to make a law doing X. This is where the disputes and cross border things come into play. When X isn't completely covered, the treaty ensures that it will be. I'm just going to drop some links without actually hyper-linking them. The slash code might make links from them or you can copy and paste.

Berne Convention http://www.law.cornell.edu/treaties/berne/overview.html
This is the part that says the other countries have to make protections.

UCC
http://portal.unesco.org/culture/en/ev.php-URL_ID=1814&URL_DO=DO_TOPIC&URL_SECTION=201.html

WTO
http://www.wto.org/english/docs_e/legal_e/legal_e.htm

WIPO
http://www.wipo.int/standards/en/

This site which is part of the WIPO site seems to have collections of laws concerning copyright in other countries.

There are more, those are the big ones. They, as well as Wikipedia, will link to more but you will have a good Idea after a getting through a lot of that and might not need them.

Wikipedia has a petty good analysis of most/some of them. Wiki tends to get somewhat biased and noteworthy sometimes so here are a few other sources with he raw language of the treaties.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Agreement_on_Trade-Related_Aspects_of_Intellectual_Property_Rights
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/World_Intellectual_Property_Organization
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Berne_Convention_for_the_Protection_of_Literary_and_Artistic_Works

A problem is going to be that I don't know for sure if I can (have the skills and patients) make you understand them. I barely understand most of them myself and I'm not in a position to teach on them. You should be able to get them on your own though. Remember, the treaties usually don't have the text of a law in them. They will say a country has to make a law doing X. This is where the disputes and cross border things come into play. When X isn't completely covered, the treaty ensures that it will be. I'm just going to drop some links without actually hyper-linking them. The slash code might make links from them or you can copy and paste.

Berne Convention http://www.law.cornell.edu/treaties/berne/overview.html
This is the part that says the other countries have to make protections.

UCC
http://portal.unesco.org/culture/en/ev.php-URL_ID=1814&URL_DO=DO_TOPIC&URL_SECTION=201.html

WTO
http://www.wto.org/english/docs_e/legal_e/legal_e.htm

WIPO
http://www.wipo.int/standards/en/

This site which is part of the WIPO site seems to have collections of laws concerning copyright in other countries.

There are more, those are the big ones. They, as well as Wikipedia, will link to more but you will have a good Idea after a getting through a lot of that and might not need them.

And Mr. Uzi Nissan won and Nissan Motor Company lost. Your point was...?

http://www.wipo.int/amc/en/domains/decisions/html/2001/d2001-0825.html

How about this example?

There is an exception to this which is valid in this case. The trademark in question (if it is a trademark, as the submission is not explicit here), is the last name of the person owning the domain. In this case, the last name should take precedence over the trademark unless it was registered "in bad faith".

It appears that the Respondent registered the Domain Name in order to be identified by his surname, in line therefore with the provision of paragraph 4(c)(ii) of the Policy.[...]The use of one's own surname in a domain name corresponds to a legitimate customary practice and is, as a rule, sufficient evidence of a legitimate right or interest in the domain name. The scope of the Policy is limited to cybersquatting. Trademark owners shall not be allowed to use the Policy to dispossess summarily a third party of a domain name reflecting his or her surname (G.A. Modefine S.A. v. A. R. Mani, WIPO Case No.D2001-0537).

(And if you think that that's a bad analogy, no, it's not even just an analogy: everything you write, even emails, is automatically copyrighted by you. So essentially they're selling something wholesale, on which that guy and everyone who's ever sent him an email, has a copyright.)

Funny, I didn't realize Venezuela's copyright laws worked in exactly the same way as the U.S's.

Perhaps you'd like to use a source to substantiate that claim?

Sorry to give you a hard time about it, but I think it's very important for people to realize that copyright law is not the same throughout the entire world.

http://www.wipo.int/pctdb/en/wo.jsp?wo=2007059578&IA=AU2006001773&DISPLAY=DESC

If you are against software patents, the best thing you can do is get your own patents in the current state of things. Then you can choose to not enforce them, while having strong grounds to prevent anyone else from patenting it and suing you despite your work being prior art. (It can and does happen.)

In this case, that won't work at all. The second thing the company will want is for the patent to be assigned to them. http://www.wipo.int/sme/en/documents/license_assign_patent.htm has this to say on the subject:

Sometimes an assignment is mandatory, such as where employee inventions are assigned by an employee to the employer, or, in some circumstances, by an employer to an employee, and a license is simply inappropriate.

[...]

In contrast, an assignment is irrevocable.

An assignment involves the sale and transfer of ownership of the patent by the assignor to the assignee.

This transfer of ownership is permanent and irrevocable.

Just as when any other asset or property is sold, its sale results in the former owner being permanently divested of that ownership.

My guess is that you intended to joke, but MetaGrid and HyperNet have already been trademarked. Quote: "GridNet(tm) includes, but is not necessarily limited to, two moieties, The MetaGrid(tm) and The HyperNet(tm)."

Dell has often been adversarial. Here are some recent stories about ways Dell has treated customers poorly:

For example, Dell notebook turns into a Bad Buy. Quote: "... wonder if company executives just don't care anymore what people think of Dell support." Another quote from the same story: "Every contact number I got took me to an overseas call center, and after finally getting past the ridiculous voice systems, when I got a live person and asked for corporate contact info (email or phone) for corporate, I was either disconnected or put on hold for a manager -- who never picked up and I was disconnected after five minutes."

Here's a quote from No Spare Processors for Dell Server: "At what point does a manufacturer's obligation to provide spare parts for a system cease? Consider the experience of one reader who recently found he could not get a processor for a two-year-old Dell server, a system still covered by a Dell same-day onsite service contract."

Another quote from College Kid Learns Lesson About Dell's Warranty: "Maybe I've been lucky, but in 70 years I've never dealt with a worse company than Dell."

So, what exactly is the precedent here? I didn't think you could copyright the layout of a board game.

If they copy the board, even if they subsequently modify it then it's copyright infringement.

So the test is probably whether the same colours are used for the squares, and whether the double-letter, triple-word, etc., squares are in the same place.

---
<Rant on USPTO website starts here!>

Incidentally I tried to view Butts patent from 1938 but the USPTO.gov website is about the worst internet site I've seen. It took about 5 clicks, through pages with absolutlely no UI design, to get to the search. The search hasn't changed in about 10 years, which you'd think might mean it works well - you'd be wrong. Then the search results are displayed so poorly, older patents just having a list of codes next to them. Then to top it off you can't see the images because they require you to use some weird-ass TIFF viewer. Seriously, a tiff-viewer! This website is like something slowly cobbled together by someone who has no clue about the internet, UI design, accessing information.

I'm guessing there's a single "designer" who's the sort of person that simply piles everything up in his room, he can find anything at the drop of a hat. But the appearance is of absolute chaos to anyone else.

I've been on the 'net since about '94 (JANET and all that) and started surfing the www in about '96 (Mosaic on UNIX terminals at Uni). In that time I don't ever recall seeing such a poor website in terms of the expectation of a large organisation, the vast number of users that must be subjected to it and the paucity of the results it produces.

Couldn't the USPTO afford to employ one actual web designer?

Compare their patent search with that of Espacenet from the EPO or Patentscope (RTM) from WIPO or the IBM backed Prior Art DB! Can you tell which were actually designed to retrieve information from?

http://gb.espacenet.com/search97cgi/s97_cgi.exe?Action=FormGen&Template=gb/en/advanced.hts

http://www.wipo.int/pctdb/en/index.jsp

https://priorart.ip.com/search.jsp?searchType=freetextSearch

Perhaps you ought to take a look at this patent submitted recently: http://www.wipo.int/pctdb/en/wo.jsp?WO=2008039176

Like this patent ? :: http://www.wipo.int/pctdb/en/wo.jsp?IA=WO2002044935&wo=2002044935&DISPLAY=CLAIMS

"Eloquent as usual, Garwulf. You might try making a point."

I did - and you're still misusing words. You might try getting your facts right.

"Well, it would if it were not for the Berne Convention and automatic copyrights. If one had to apply for a copyright for a specific work and be granted a certificate, I would be in complete agreement with you, and in theory, that is how copyright is supposed to function."

First of all, the Berne Convention does protect the creation of derivative works, and on a related note, denies the copyrighting of information. Article 2, Clause 3 reads: "Translations, adaptations, arrangements of music and other alterations of a literary or artistic work shall be protected as original works without prejudice to the copyright in the original work."

And Article 2, Clause 8 reads: "The protection of this Convention shall not apply to news of the day or to miscellaneous facts having the character of mere items of press information."

You can look this up for yourself here: http://www.wipo.int/treaties/en/ip/berne/trtdocs_wo001.html

"Automatic copyrights, however, force all speech that is stored for any length of time in any "tangible" medium to become "works". So, everything you "say" on the net -- even on Skype -- is copyrighted and could be used to sue someone else for infringement. Please do not give me any arguments about how "nobody would do that". People always say that, and then somebody does it a generation later."

You are correct - somebody could sue somebody else based on automatic copyright. What you're missing is that they'd probably lose. Anybody can claim a copyright on something - proving the date of creation is a very different matter.

There is only one form of proof of copyright that is fully recognized by courts of law, and that is a certificate from the Copyright Office. If you want to protect your copyright in court, you have to register it. Any other proof that the copyright is rightfully yours, from a timestamp on a file to a postmark from mailing an envelope to yourself, is too easily faked.

Would you like the URL for your country's Copyright Office?

"This would be costly for me, and large corporations with deep pockets can use this method to censor Free Speech by outspending their adversaries. If you do not believe this, consider the case of the "four file sharing students". The RIAA sued them for enabling file sharing when they each created search engines. In all four cases, they probably would have won in court, but none of them had the financial resources to go up against the RIAA."

First of all, that is a feature of the American court system that is not necessarily duplicated elsewhere. In my country (Canada), for example, in a civil case the loser is required to pay most of, if not all of, the winner's legal fees. If the court decides that the suit was frivolous, it will also fine the losing party. The situation you described is a trapping of the American court system, not copyright law, regardless of how corrupt the RIAA is, or how bad the DMCA is.

(And believe me, I have been very vocal to my government about how bad the proposed Canadian version is.)

"I also think that ideas cannot be property"

Copyright law agrees with you - it only protects exact implementation. American patent law, on the other hand, does not, but we aren't talking about that, regardless of how broken it has become.

"Copyright is a form of state control. It is the state claiming a set of speech belongs exclusively to a person to control. That is communism as information is an inexhaustible resource."

No, it isn't. When the government protects the ability of an individual or business to profit from their idea or implementation of an idea, that is called CAPITALISM. Communism would be if the state declared that, in the name of the people, the copyright either belonged to the state, or to the workers.

"When copyri

i don't know if this scheme will work, but hands down, that is the most sexual innuendo i've heard in an energy generation scheme in a long time

...and if you're a must-be-new-here AC, you follow the link to The Fine Patent and then get a gander at the image itself. Just take a good, long, turgid^Wclose look at this!
It feels like more than a coincidence that my captcha is "hardest".

But this shows a better image.

here

Sounds like it's not snake oil on the surface, but I have no real knowledge of the field.

After about an hour, I realised that the "technological measure" definition probably refers to the "effective technological measures" described in the 1997 WIPO treaty.

Article 11: Obligations concerning Technological Measures

The existence of legal protection for "effective Technological Measures" does not necessarily imply any actually exist. Technological Measures MUST be effective for legal protection, otherwise, it would be impossible to know if you are circumventing them.

Regards,

James Phillips

If found older (English) peer-reviewed papers by this Author here and here. He doesn't seem to have published much on this since then, except for a very vague patent application to be found here.

It seems unlikely to me that the first move an earnest discoverer of a new energy source in Japan would be to call an Italian newspaper. All the more since he seems to be working in academia and would thus have a strong incentive to publish in a peer-reviewed journal first (you don't get the Nobel prize for an article in "Il sore 24 ore"). But, here are the papers. Form your own opinion...