Nymex Suit Pushes Copyright Envelope explains that Nymex claims it has copyright in its prices–despite the fact that prices are simply exchange ratios–that is, facts–and copyright protects original expressions of ideas, not mere facts.
“Right and Wrong: The copy-right infringement,” by John Bloom, Nov. 22, 2002, National Review Online, makes a decent argument that the Bono copyright law’s extension of copyright terms is unconstutional because this violates the Constitution’s provision that Congress can grant copyright for “limited times”. I’m still doubtul the Supremes will overturn the law, but if they buy reasoning like Bloom’s, maybe they will. Who knows.
It might benefit journalists who write on IP issues to ask an IP attorney to read over their final draft, however. Bloom writes that copyright means this: “Whoever creates something that has never been created before has the exclusive right to copy it. […] It’s not the person who registers it with the Library of Congress. It’s the person who does it first. Just the act of creation makes the right kick in.”
Bloom is quite right that there need be no registration to obtain a copyright; it is granted automatically to the author of an “original work,” the moment the work is “fixed” in a “tangible medium of expression. But he is wrong to imply that “doing it first” is really relevant for purposes of copyright. He seems to be confusing patent law with copyright law. A patent to an invention is awarded only if the inventor applies for it. It is not granted automatically. And, two independent inventors of the same invention cannot both receive a patent on it: the first inventor (with certain technical exceptions) is the one who wins, in case of a dispute.
But nothing in copyright law requires that one be the first author of an original work; the only requirement is that one be an actual author of an original work, and that one did not simply copy it from someone else. In theory, if two people were to independently create the same work, at different times, each has a copyright in it. Now this is extremely unlikely, so the “first” person to create it is usually the only copyright owner. But it is not his being first that matters, but simply that he is a creator of an original work that is fixed in a tangible medium of expression.
Check out Patent Logistics’ neat, simple and FREE USPTO Patent Fetcher. Other patent download tools–some free, some not–can be found here.
I was interviewed in Phil Harvey’s “On the Phone” column, in the latest issue of Light Reading, “The Global Site for Optical Networking.” Go figure.
Update: Also discussed in Kinsella for Judge.
Free the Baby Lawyers!: Deprogramming the associates at Clifford Chance, by Dahlia Lithwick, Slate, October 29, 2002. Good article on the confusion and warped values of associates and partners at large law firms.
Patent Absurdity: Ending a drug company scam, by Ronald Bailey (ReasonOnline, October 23, 2002) describes the clever manipulation of the patent and federal drug regulatory system by drug manufacturers to fend off competition from manufactuers of generics.
1. GoToMyPC.com: lets you access your home (or work) PC from any other PC having an internet connection; works very well, and is faster than PCAnywhere. About $20/month.
2. mail2web.com: A great (and free) way to access your email on the road. Again, all you need is Internet access, your email address, and your email password. Mail2web figures out the POP3 etc. stuff.
3. j2.com: For emailable/web-accessible faxing. You can get a free fax number on which to receive faxes (which are then instantly emailed to you as an attachement). The free service gives you an out-of-area-code fax number, but who cares? If you pay about $13/month for j2Premiere service, you can get a local area code fax number, and send faxes from email, from the web, or from the “print” function of most applications. It’s great.
Steve Gillmor’s latest InfoWorld “Ahead of the Curve” column, We the People …, contains some provocative thoughts on the legitimacy of intellectual property–comparing it, in some ways, to Prohibition.
There’s No Stopping Them: Perpetual motion is alive and well at the U.S. patent office, October 2002 Scientific American.
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