A friend in Cambodia alerted me to this story , about the Cambodian Prime Minister’s ban on 3G phones to prevent the spread of porn. Said the PM: Hold it. Do not yet start the mobile phone services through which the callers can see each others’ images. Maybe we can wait for another 10 years or so until we have done enough to strengthen the
Supreme Court Hears Arguments in KSR summarizes the oral arguments for KSR International v. Teleflex , an important patent case pending before the Supreme Court. The question involves whether it should be more difficult to obtain a patent for a claimed invention in a patent application. In our patent system, a patent may be obtained if four
I pointed out in There’s No Such Thing as a Free Patent that “The conventional defense of the patent system is that it is essential in order to stimulate creativity.” And here, on the widely-read Patently-O Patent Law blog, we have patent attorney Dennis Crouch casually admitting : Patents are intended to lure potential inventors into the business
Or: We’re from the government—and we’re here to help. In Perspective: Let global online freedom ring? , my former partner, e-commerce law expert Eric Sinrod critiques the proposed Global Online Freedom Act of 2006 . Like the hideous Foreign Corrupt Practices Act , which outlaws US companies or citizens paying bribes to foreign officials even if
I’ve recently bemoaned the damage done to RIM, the manufacturer of the Blackberry, by the US patent system. RIM eventually had to settle for over $600M with NTP, even though the patents it was accused of violating were being re-examined in the US Patent Office and might be overturned. Nevertheless, the very real threat of an injunction by the
Good interview here . I liked his comments on “ Net Neutrality “: When asked what he thought about it, he responded: This is where basically the Net is not allowed to discriminate? I think it’s an obscenity. I think people that have paid for the wires and cables should able to charge whatever they want for their product. And for other people to
Bootlegger County, State of Mississippi, is as dry as a sandpile in a Saudi Arabian back yard. Alcoholic beverages are verboten by edict of the governor. What a piece of work is man to let the government tell us what we can drink, where we can drink, and how much of the proceeds should go into political pockets. It is an ominous precedent. If the
In a recent issue of Greg Aharonian’s PatNews newsletter, he points out that it may be possible for patent law to be stretched to cover things like music, which have traditionally been held to be non-patentable. I reprint the entire entry below. In it, Aharonian fumes that patent attorneys don’t fulfill their “ethical” obligation to speak out on
What is the Mises Institute?
The Mises Institute is a non-profit organization that exists to promote teaching and research in the Austrian School of economics, individual freedom, honest history, and international peace, in the tradition of Ludwig von Mises and Murray N. Rothbard.
Non-political, non-partisan, and non-PC, we advocate a radical shift in the intellectual climate, away from statism and toward a private property order. We believe that our foundational ideas are of permanent value, and oppose all efforts at compromise, sellout, and amalgamation of these ideas with fashionable political, cultural, and social doctrines inimical to their spirit.