I recently saw a play about Buckminster Fuller, an inventor, inveterate writer of mixed obscure and enlightening but wordy prose, and a teacher of considerable renown among his students and the colleges where he taught. That led me to his book Critical Path where he discusses invention and innovation. A quote: "Ideas are easy to come by; reductions to practice is an arduous but inspirationally rewarding matter."

Fuller was born in 1895 and died in 1983 and so is unlikely to be widely remembered or read today. He recounts his experience with patents, concluding that it was not worth it for inventors to get patents because of their cost and the long period between the idea and its fruition in saleable goods. He summed it up, "Most of my inventions have come into public use after my patent rights have expired."

He describes one of the major costs of protecting inventions as the patent attorneys whose services are essential because, "Vast knowledge of the precedents in court-decision history and of the patent strategy of great corporations is essential in the writing of claims."

Finally he quotes the corporate attorneys speaking to his lawyer, "Of course, the first thing my client asked me to do was to find a way of circumventing your client's patent, but you have written the claims so well that I was forced to advise my client to procure a license under your patent without exposing himself to almost certainly devastating infringement expense."

Fuller finds two truths from his experience, "... big business, which now makes its major profits out of know-how, deliberately steals know-how wealth whenever possible; the second is that if I had not taken out patents, you would probably never have heard of me ...."

He gave up on inventing for money and got his rewards from the renown of his patent disputes. So much for using his experience as justification for patents as encouraging invention.

James Kwack writes about the face-off between Google and Apple for control of personal computing, in what at first sight is not germane to the usual subject matter of this blog, but bear with me--in the end, it is about competing monopolies based on different technologies and patents and copyrights link here. In the first of a two part blog series, he describes the evolution of the personal computing and in the second he picks up the appearance of cloud computing and its meaning for the competitive battle. The cloud is Google's realm and the personal computer and associated gadgets like the iPod, iPad, etc. are Apple's. Microsoft is the also-ran in this competition since it seems likely to become increasingly irrelevant to the long-run result.

The key to the Apple strategy is to make the Mac and its spun off gadgets as proprietary as possible, so that owners of the cool gadgets must buy the software which however cannot be used on other makers' hardware, producing a lock-in. Google on the other hand has made the operating system increasingly irrelevant on the PC since it has Windows substitutes in Android and Chrome. While its operating systems are open, its monopoly power derives from its dominance over advertising on the web which it can retain as long as it retains its premier standing in Search software.

On the basis of cost to consumers, it would seem preferable for Google to win this test, but not completely, with the Macs retaining some part of the market based on coolness but at higher prices. In the end, it does not seem quickly apparent that government intervention will provide any consumer benefit, since this industry has fundamental aspects of a natural monopoly, giving the two protagonists a hefty advantage over potential competitors. But each must retain its lead by continuing to innovate.

While we ponder the future of intellectual property with our focus mainly on the encouragement of its creation, we also need to think about collecting it, preservating it, accessing it, and reproducing it for wider distribution. Jonathan Shaw writes about these matters in Harvard Magazine in the context of libraries at Harvard University and in libraries more generally link here and here and here.

The focus is on libraries, but Shaw draws connections as well to the internet, Google's digitizing of books, to how librarians have become experts in finding access to relevant material through many media, and of the need for specialization as knowledge has become more complex and extensive.

It seems to me that without saying so explicitly, the article constitutes a powerful argument for making information as freely and cheaply available as possible. It also provides examples of how this is already being done. Innovation is clearly taking place here, and IP law needs to get out of the way.

The Economist has two articles this week of interest to IP critics. The first addresses detecting what the article calls piracy link here. It cites a new way to do the deed using a scan of all the frames in a video to tell whether the "copy" is really a copy. It hyperventilates," The technology is said to have an average detection rate of 96% and a low rate of false alarms: a mere five per million, according to tests by the ISO. It can detect if a video is pirated from clips as short as two seconds. And an ordinary PC can be used with the system to scour through 1,000 hours of video in a second."

The problem with that is whether the portion "detected" as a copy is really piracy. The article totally ignores whether fair use would allow the "copy."

More important would be the temptation to redefine piracy as any "copy" which included more than some arbitrary percentage of the original. Under that doctrine, one may foresee the final end of fair use by defining it so narrowly that none would be legal. That could end up, for example, outlawing all satirical take-offs and other indisputably legitimate uses of original material.

The second Economist article discusses open access to the internet and net neutrality link here. It has an interesting account of the long history of the legal doctrine of common carrier status.

It concludes, "America's regulatory approach has left much of the country with a cable monopoly for truly fast broadband access. The single largest reason given for failing to purchase broadband access in America is price, and many non-adopters are stymied by hardware fees, a lack of billing transparency and the extra cost of bundled services that providers often add to internet access. The FCC's current plan to ask last-mile providers to subsidise rural service, and to ensure equal treatment of packets of information is a mild intervention by global standards. America's modern-day common carriers should count themselves lucky."

Both articles are definitely worth a read.

Few people I know watch Bill Moyer's Journal. His broadcast last week was really thought provoking. He first interviewed Professor William K. Black, a one time bank regulator link here and then FCC commissioner Michael J Copps link here, each with videos followed by transcripts. Both were thought provoking, as is usually the case. Black slams all the regulators for failing to stop the financial community which either caused the financial disaster or greatly worsened it. One quote that will leap out at you, "The Fed had unique authority. And it had it since 1994 to regulate every single mortgage lender in America." Which implies it still does. I haven't been able to confirm that but elsewhere Black notes that with the end of Glass-Steagall, the authorities were indicating their disinclination to regulate and had concluded that all was for the best in unregulated markets.

Copps never mentions the Citizens United case by which the Supreme Court took away the FCC's authority to regulate the internet because the Commission had decided years back that the internet was entertainment, not communications (probably in cahoots with the companies) and the FCC did not have authority to regulate entertainment. The simple solution is to go back to the old definition of the internet as communication so that the FCC can reclaim its authority. But like so much involving making the internet more competitive, it is strongly opposed by most of the industry.

The broadcast next week will be Moyer's last. He says he wants to retire and do a few things with the rest of his life. PBS is supposed to be finding a replacement. We will see with what success.