Daniel Wallace has challenged the GPL license widely used for open source software. He argues that it violates the anti-trust laws by making entry into the software industry difficult because it keeps price low. Groklaw has a nice article on the dismissal of his first lawsuit. Enterprise Open Source Magazine (HT: Slashdot) is reporting the dismissal of his second lawsuit. Yet another victory for sanity in the judiciary: both judges pointed out that that it isn't anti-competitive to sell good products at low prices, however difficult it makes it for people like Daniel Wallace to enter the industry selling lousy products at high prices.

Several IP news items today. First it is being widely reported that the Supreme Court is cracking down on patent trolls - requiring the Circuit Court not to issue an injunction without considering what the potential damages might be. This may make it harder for a company without a patent to threaten to close down a business by getting an injunction - we will see. However, they may claim huge damages on account of not being able to enter the market, so it probably won't make much difference.

In the other direction Slashdot is also reporting that Creative is suing Apple over the iPod interface. Couldn't happen to nicer guys: Apple having done their best to patent the interface as well. It is probably a good reason to sell stock in both firms.

Kevin Kelly has a long New York Times article about digitizing books, Google's solution to the orphan works problem, and the clash of the copyright monopoly business model versus the disruptive competitive digital technology model.
Kelly points out that the five publishers that sued Google last year are partners in the Google Book Search Partner Program. They want readers to be able to search books because it's good for their business. But like any monopolist, they don't want to give up their rents.

Here is the May 15 Business Week article "Hauling in the Hollywood Hackers".

The FBI, aided by a mole, did a sting operation against some movie file sharing entrepreneurs in California (including a programmer in Connectucut), who were convicted of "criminal copyright infringement," and are facing a total of 54 years in prison and large fines.

The article details how both the hacker-entrepreneurs and the FBI enforcers work. The enforcers mostly go after the top tier of the hackers' network instead of either the lower tiers or the end users, who presumably are also criminals, at least under the copyright statutes. The FBI did arrest an employee of a movie theatre in St. Louis, who loaded a copy of a movie onto the server of a hacker group.

FBI agent Julia B. Jolie compares it to a "gang war." Who's the gang and who's fighting the war?

Free the Hollywood Hackers!

Lilly lost its patent case to Ariad, as detailed in this story.

Lilly claims that Ariad's patent for drugs working through a biological pathway "is equivalent to discovering that gravity is the force that makes water run downhill and then demanding the owners of all the existing hydroelectric plants begin to pay royalties on their use of gravity."

The US PTO is rethinking the validity of Ariad's patent, at Lilly's request. Hopefully it will invalidate the patent. Presumably this would make the 50-odd firms Ariad has sent licensing letters to tell it to take a hike.

Keith Olbermann reported last night on MSNBC's "Countdown" that the new owner of 85 percent of Elvis Presley Enterprises intends to start licensing Elvis impersonators. No license, no impersonation. (Read about it here.) If this stands, it means that no one will be free, without permission, to dress in a particular way, grow one's hair and sideburns in a particular way, wear a particular kind of sunglasses, and sing particular songs in a particular style in public. "If we were going to do a show that was based on Elvis impersonators, then obviously it wouldn't make sense to have unauthorised Elvis impersonators," Robert Sillerman said.

Does someone want to argue that IP doesn't entail the violation of individiual liberty?

Big Pharma Wants More Time Expect a new skirmish between Big Pharma and the generics. Some leading drugmakers are preparing a push for legal changes to extend their period of protection from generic rivals. Industry executives say that Bristol-Myers Squibb (BMY ) CEO Peter Dolan, who now heads the Pharmaceutical Research & Manufacturers of America, an industry association, is likely to make the effort a top priority. A drug's patent protection typically lasts about 20 years. But it runs from the time a compound is discovered rather than when a drug gets FDA approval and comes to market, usually 8 to 12 years later. Generics makers aggressively attack patents on blockbusters, challenges that, if successful, further shorten the patent protection. There's also five years of "data protection," another right to exclusivity based on clinical trial results. This kicks in at approval. Pharma's complaint? Robert Armitage, Eli Lilly's (LLY ) general counsel, says the resulting exclusive periods under this system aren't long enough, given multiyear clinical trials. He wants 15 years of data protection, along with a 15-year patent, also granted at FDA approval. Such a scheme would effectively lock out generics since they would need to produce their own data in costly clinical trials. With the feds paying for Medicare prescriptions, any change likely to raise the bill will be a tough sell. Says Ira Loss, executive vice-president at Washington Analysis: "They are going to be hard pressed to move this very far." By Amy Barrett

The media are reporting

High Court judge Peter Smith rejected a copyright-infringement claim by Michael Baigent and Richard Leigh, authors of "The Holy Blood and the Holy Grail," who claimed that Brown's blockbuster "appropriated the architecture" of their 1982 book. In the United States, the book is titled, "Holy Blood, Holy Grail."

...

Smith said the plaintiffs had based their copying claim on a "selective number of facts and ideas artificially taken out of (the book) for the purpose of the litigation."

But perhaps the real purpose of the lawsuit was this?

Baigent and Leigh['s] ... 24-year-old book is selling 7,000 copies a week in Britain, compared with a few hundred before the case began. Baigent's new book, "The Jesus Papers: Exposing the Greatest Cover-Up in History," has an initial print run of 150,000 copies in the United States.

It seems like we can post one of these stories every day. CNN and other media are reporting

Online DVD rental company Netflix Inc. sued rival Blockbuster Inc. for patent infringement Tuesday, asking a federal judge in Northern California to shut down Blockbuster's 18-month-old online rental service and award Netflix damages, according to a copy of the filing.

...

The first patent, granted in 2003, covers the method by which Netflix customers select and receive a certain number of movies at a time, and return them for more titles.

The second patent, issued Tuesday, "covers a method for subscription-based online rental that allows subscribers to keep the DVDs they rent for as long as they wish without incurring any late fees, to obtain new DVDs without incurring additional charges and to prioritize and reprioritize their own personal dynamic queue -- of DVDs to be rented," the lawsuit said.

Maybe the geniuses responsible for the current law can explain how this "promote[s] the progress of science and useful arts?"

There is an article in the Washington Post about Tivo's lawsuit against EchoStar. Apparently

TiVo is suing EchoStar, the parent of the Dish satellite TV service, claiming it stole TiVo's technology that allows users to digitally record one show while watching another.

Read that again. Obviously they didn't invent the idea of recording one show while watching another - VCRs were always able to do that. Obviously to anyone who had ever programmed a computer, the idea of doing it digitally is completely trivial - it is a matter of getting the software/hardware combination to work fast enough. So maybe EchoStar some stole Tivo's hard work in getting things to work right? Apparently not

EchoStar attorney Harold McElhinny has been telling the Texas jury that EchoStar invented a DVR that uses technology different from that of TiVo. But it is an uphill battle, Clark said, in part because of the legal rule known as the "doctrine of equivalents."

The rule protects patent-holders from those who would use slightly different technology in order to build a device with substantially the same functionality as a product that already has been patented. The rule could be particularly relevant in this case because TiVo introduced DVRs to the public and its name has become synonymous with the technology.

So what was it that Tivo did to deserve a monopoly? Apparently they were first to market, and had the misfortune to have a sufficiently bad business model that they need a government bailout.