Ryan Paul writes "Microsoft has filed a patent infringement lawsuit against TomTom alleging that the device maker's products, including some that are Linux-based, infringe on patents related to Microsoft's FAT32 filesystem. This marks the first time that Microsoft has enforced its FAT patents against the Linux platform, a move that some free software advocates have long feared could be disastrous link here."

Such a move has long been expected, and from time to time, MS has made noises about its software patents being infringed but then didn't pursue it. This raises the possibility that MS feels more threatened than in the past by competition from Linux.

The choice of TomTom, a small firm, as the target suggests that MS thinks it is likely to fold and would like to have a precedent. Is it possible that MS also believes software patents may not be solid?

As most of us here believe, software patents are a particularly outrageous creation of the courts among the group of dubious extensions of intellectual property. Some public outrage is needed here.

Roy Blount Jr, the president of the Writers Guild, opines that authors ought to have a property right to the oral rendering of their written works, although he would not charge the blind link here. This apparently has been provoked by the ability of new technology to render computer text into intelligible, almost-human-voice quality. If I record a human reading my written work, the reader and I will be paid, but if a machine does it, I won't. So, " people who want to keep on doing creative things for a living must be duly vigilant about any new means of transmitting their work."

Apparently no one seems to be worried about the constant expansion of property rights, even seemingly absurd ones. I have no doubt that the government has the power to create the right, just as it has the power to define and enforce all property rights, but why is this extension justified?

Blount's clinching argument is, "For the record: no, the Authors Guild does not expect royalties from anybody doing non-commercial performances of "Goodnight Moon." If parents want to send their children off to bed with the voice of Kindle 2, however, it's another matter." How generous of him!

This issue is raised by the Kindle 2, which has oral as well as visual output. The next thing, the authors will want is a counter on the machine, to record each time a reading takes place so the author can be paid his due.

Like other IP creators, authors seem to want to get their piece of any new technology that comes along, even when it vastly decreases the cost of delivering their work and adds to their net income. It will only stop when consumers vote out the rascals who pass these extensions into law or the judges who redefine the right.

This issue is raised by the Kindle 2, which has oral as well as visual output. The next thing, the authors will want is a counter on the machine, to record each time a reading takes place so the author can be paid his due.

Like other IP creators, authors seem to want to get their piece of any new technology that comes along, even when it vastly decreases the cost of delivering their work. It will only stop when consumers vote out the rascals who pass these extensions into law or the judges who redefine the right.

Shepard Fairey, the artist who created the iconic Obama poster and was threatened with a suit by AP which claimed the art violated the copyright on its photo, has now sued the AP back link here. "The lawsuit filed in U.S. District Court in Manhattan said Los Angeles street artist Shepard Fairey did not violate the copyright of the April 2006 photograph because he dramatically changed the nature of the image."

Get that! Someone who was sued by a big corporation is willing to sue back. Derivative is not copying by any reasonable definition.

The AP is ticked at Artist Shepard Fairey for using the pose and expression from its picture of candidate Obama as the basis for his poster link with pictures here. His rendition has become iconic and so the AP is now seeking money.

This is ridiculous. Most art is derivative in some sense. How many pixels need to change before it becomes an original that no longer infringes someone's copyright? One? Two? Let's hope they sue and get a legal determination that clarifies this issue. And then we need the Congress to remove copyright on images.

Steven Pearlstein writes to oppose a proposed merger between drug giants Pfizer and Wyeth link here. His grounds are that the industry has been merging to stay profitable through the establishment of product monopolies rather than competing to produce new and better products. The whole point of drug patents is to foster innovation, so Pearlstein is dead right, though as he implies, rather late in the day after the growth of conglomerates has already sharply reduced competition.

Eric Pfanner devotes a column to the war between downloaders and the music companies link here. He has apparently reported frequently on the subject and here reviews the field after calling our attention to the Isle of Man which proposes on grounds of "tax efficiency" to put a small tax on the fee its citizens pay their internet service providers. The pot would be divided up according to the number of downloads and given to the copyright holder. Similar ideas have been proposed before. The companies are opposed so far.

Short of getting rid of copyright on music, this compromise might not be bad, if the fee charged remains low. In fact the island's government could push the issue by imposing it and not preventing non-islanders from down-loading, creating a sort of national Pirate Bay. How long could the companies hold out?

Steve Hamm writes in Business Week about another absurd patent link here. IBM has succeeded in getting one on a method to insert hems and haws into artificial voices used in recordings to make them sound more realistic. Most speakers try to kill those habits. The patent is for "generating paralinguistic phenomena via markup in text-to-speech syntheses." Imagine that. Monopoly really encourages meaningful innovation.

HBO got the exclusive right to broadcast Sunday's inaugural concert link here. They are now firing off take-down notices against YouTube posts of clips of the concert, even privately filmed ones--and making them stick. No question of fair use or who made the video.

Where is the outrage?

Michael Perelman reported before on Google's deal with authors and publishers link here. MOTOKO RICH gives some more detail on the deal link here which still has to be approved by the court. Here are some of the major points from the article.

"It will make it possible for users to read a far greater collection of books, including many still under copyright protection."

"According to Dan Clancy, the engineering director for Google book search, every month users view at least 10 pages of more than half of the one million out-of-copyright books that Google has scanned into its servers."

"For readers who might want to buy digital access to an individual scanned book, Mr. Clancy said, Google was likely to sell at least half of the books for $5.99 or less. Students and faculty at universities who subscribe to the database will be able to get the full contents of all the books free."

"The settlement may give new life to copyrighted out-of-print books in a digital form and allow writers to make money from titles that had been out of commercial circulation for years. Of the seven million books Google has scanned so far, about five million are in this category."

"Revenue will be generated through advertising sales on pages where previews of scanned books appear, through subscriptions by libraries and others to a database of all the scanned books in Google's collection, and through sales to consumers of digital access to copyrighted books. Google will take 37 percent of this revenue, leaving 63 percent for publishers and authors."

"Just what kind of commercial opportunity the settlement represents is unknown, but few expect it to generate significant profits for any individual author. Even Google does not necessarily expect the book program to contribute significantly to its bottom line."

Rich reports some criticisms of the settlement, but they seem small beer. That readers might decide to pass up a book based on a few pages of its text might just as likely be encouraged to read the whole thing. More telling was the concern of some libraries that the charges would price them out of the market for the service.

To me, the settlement seems like a good deal for most people, short of the abolition of copyright. Publishers are likely to suffer in the long run as the market for printed books continues to shrink.

Marcia Angell, a Senior Lecturer in Social Medicine at Harvard Medical School writes a review of three books that supports that judgment link here. E.g., when a doctor (a professor at Harvard Med School) is also on the payroll of a drug company, diagnoses a two-year old as bipolar, and is instrumental in the drug's widespread use among the very young, a drug produced by that company, it is hard to conclude anything else.

Four quotes from the review: "Because these psychiatrists were singled out by Senator Grassley, they received a great deal of attention in the press, but similar conflicts of interest pervade medicine. (The senator is now turning his attention to cardiologists.) Indeed, most doctors take money or gifts from drug companies in one way or another. Many are paid consultants, speakers at company-sponsored meetings, ghost-authors of papers written by drug companies or their agents, and ostensible "researchers" whose contribution often consists merely of putting their patients on a drug and transmitting some token information to the company. Still more doctors are recipients of free meals and other out-and-out gifts. In addition, drug companies subsidize most meetings of professional organizations and most of the continuing medical education needed by doctors to maintain their state licenses."

"Many drugs that are assumed to be effective are probably little better than placebos, but there is no way to know because negative results are hidden. One clue was provided six years ago by four researchers who, using the Freedom of Information Act, obtained FDA reviews of every placebo-controlled clinical trial submitted for initial approval of the six most widely used antidepressant drugs approved between 1987 and 1999 Prozac, Paxil, Zoloft, Celexa, Serzone, and Effexor. They found that on average, placebos were 80 percent as effective as the drugs. The difference between drug and placebo was so small that it was unlikely to be of any clinical significance. The results were much the same for all six drugs: all were equally ineffective. But because favorable results were published and unfavorable results buried (in this case, within the FDA), the public and the medical profession believed these drugs were potent antidepressants."

"Conflicts of interest affect more than research. They also directly shape the way medicine is practiced, through their influence on practice guidelines issued by professional and governmental bodies, and through their effects on FDA decisions. A few examples: in a survey of two hundred expert panels that issued practice guidelines, one third of the panel members acknowledged that they had some financial interest in the drugs they considered."

"In recent years, drug companies have perfected a new and highly effective method to expand their markets. Instead of promoting drugs to treat diseases, they have begun to promote diseases to fit their drugs. The strategy is to convince as many people as possible (along with their doctors, of course) that they have medical conditions that require long-term drug treatment."

The enormous profits based on drug patents have now corrupted the doctors as well. A new system, anyone?