Innovationpartners

I don’t read many Indian IP decisions but when I read this one on Spicy IP I was fascinated.
In short the Copyright Board has set the royalty rate of playing music on the radio in India to 2% of the net advertisement earnings of each FM radio station.
The FM station had complained about the very high royalty rate for playing music. The rate was set to  20% of net advertisement revenue related to music. The recording industry actually claimed that the revenue was set so high because the radios hurt the sales of CD´s. This pretty wind and un supported claim was dismissed.
The case is interesting because the court sets a broad royalty figure in a case where the recording industry was demanding a high royalty.

Could the same happen in Europe?

• Read More »

A German researcher, Eckhard Höffner, has written a book on early copyright history and the effects of protection in Germany. 

In his book Höffner claim that a climate of non-copyright protection in Germany stimulated the distribution of knowledge and book market. He compares the situation to the British book market, where there was a more strict copyright protection. The result was that in the UK 1000 new books was published a year and in Germany that number was around 14.000. 

Höffner theorizes that it was this golden age of knowledge that stimulated Germanys industrial revolution. 

There may be some truth in that argument. It is well known that in the beginning of the 18^th century Germany had a pretty weak patent protection as well. This stimulated the pick-up of new technologies. However the attitude towards IP protection in Germany changed over time as they became the technology and knowledge leaders instead of followers. 

In my opinion Höffners research supports the idea that at one stage of development a nation or companies will thrive under a regime where nothing is protected. At a more developed stage however it is necessary to turn to copyright or patent protection to ensure continuous development. 

Actually there are current examples of just this strategy. Countries like India and Brazil were historically in favor of a lenient patent law. This has changed over time since the two countries have developed a number of great medicine companies. These companies started as copycats but now do basic research and develop new medicines themselves, and therefore turn towards stronger protection.

Read the Spiegels article og Höffners new book.

• Read More »

On Pink Tentacle I found this post on cute Japanese trademarked characters. Those Japanese marketing guys really work hard to produce some serious cuteness.

• Read More »

I read a July column from the Guardian threatening to lure the readers into beliving that copying is the new innovation. In the column Oliver Burkemann argue that the fact that there are numerous examples of “copycats” being more successful than the originals show that it pays to be a copycat. He uses Ipod and Coca Cola as examples of this. 

True the Ipod is a rip-off of the MP3 player and its Walkman predecessor. That does not mean that there is no unique inventiveness in the Ipod – design and business model to name two. 

Coca Cola is not the first “cola” beverage but used a different recipe and has introduced new standards of branding. 

So neither of these was the lightbulb or the wheel, but there is a lot of innovation in the products and it is a shame to call them copycat products. Instead it is better to recognize the innovation in improving the work of others. I myself have many of my inspirations from the work of others, and I don’t think of myself as a copycat. In order to stand on the shoulders of giants (in the words of Newton) you need a giant and even then getting on the shoulders is no picnic either. 

• Read More »

In the latest issue of the UK IPO´s newsletter there is an article about the shift between bricks and mortar value of businesses towards value originating in intangible assets. 

The article nicely supports my own findings when analyzing Danish companies and their value. 

In the article the author suggests that investors take the shift into consideration when investing in companies. This means that not only must a company align its business strategy towards its IP and intangible assets but also present itself to investors so they can see the benefit of this. One way to do this is to be more explicit about where the company value originates from. As an example a company should not only show the effectiveness in producing its goods but also the value that comes from a strong brand or a powerful patent. 

• Read More »

Via a mention on Tech Crunch I found a listing on the returns of investments done by an investment company. Among the companies the fund invested in is Intellectual Ventures…a well known patent troll. The calculations show that rate of return of the funds invested in Intellectual Ventures is negative. Actually the return is -73% which makes it the worst performing investment in the portfolio. 

So trolling may not be that effective as a cash cow as some thought. Maybe the market will regulate it self and the trolls will fail??

• Read More »

Bratz scores a hit on Barbie
Even if the Bratz craze has subsided to a level where the strange dolls are only found in toy bins in the fleamarket the fight over the rights to the dolls still rage.
A few years ago a US court awarded the ownership of the Bratz product line to Mattel. The company was the former employer of the creator and claimed the dolls belonged to them.
Now the US Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit has reversed that decision. The question was whether carter Bryants working contract with Mattel extended to the Brats doll. The court said that maybe a fragment of the original creation was covered, but all other aspects if the product line was not – pointing towards the fact that copyright protects the expression not the idea. The court said “Even assuming that MGA took some ideas wrongfully, it added tremendous value by turning the ideas into products and, eventually, a popular and highly profitable brand. The value added by  MGA’s hard work and creativity dwarfs the value of the original ideas Bryant brought with him, even recognizing the significance of those ideas. “
And continues
“Assuming that Mattel owns Bryant’s preliminary drawings and sculpt, its copyrights in the works would cover only its particular expression of the bratty-doll idea, not the idea itself. Otherwise, the firstperson to express any idea would have a monopoly over it. Degas can’t prohibit other artists from painting ballerinas, and Charlaine Harris can’t stop Stephenie Meyer from publishing Twilight just because Sookie came first”.( Kudos to the Judge for knowing Twilight.)
The court also  engages in a comparison of the different dolls and conclude that there is no infringement.

So the Bratz brand does not change ownerskip.

• Read More »

It is not often these days that you get a chance to read up on basic software copyright. It is usually all about patents these days. Via the 1709 blog however I found this new judgement that lays it all out.
 

The case SAS institute vs. World Programming Ltd. Is about:

 i  ) A claim that WPL has copied the manuals for the SAS System published by SAS Institute (”the SAS Manuals”) when creating WPS and thereby infringed the copyright in the SAS Manuals.

ii) A claim that, by copying the SAS manuals when creating WPS, WPL has indirectly copied the programs comprising the SAS Components and thereby infringed the copyright in the SAS Components.

iii) A claim that WPL has used a version of the SAS System known as the Learning Edition in contravention of the terms of its licences, and thereby both acted in breach of the relevant contracts and infringed the copyright in the Learning Edition.

iv) A claim that WPL has infringed the copyright in the SAS Manuals in creating its own documentation, namely a manual (”the WPS Manual”) and some “quick reference” guides (”the WPS Guides”).

There is a lot of programming talk in the arguments of the case but it gives a good insight in programming.
The judge does not accept a great deal of SAS Institute’s claims. Furthermore the judge refer three questions (the interesting ones) to the European Court of Justice. The most interesting question is whether programming languages are protected by copyright. There is also an interoperability question referred to the ECJ.
The case is a good read and I look forward to the ECJ decision.  

• Read More »

In today’s Berlingske (Danish Newspaper) there is a story about how Danish Windmill company Vestas will be hard pressed the coming years as the Asian tigers get more competitive.  Being in the power/energy business I decided to see it in a patent perspective. I researched the number of patents published from 2007 – 2009 relating to wind power. The number of patents and the growth can give an indication who is on top and who will be. The number of patents is an indicator of technology development – innovation – and intellectual property bargaining power.  My findings were pretty interesting (in my opinion).  I started out by examining how many patents were issued in the “windmill category”. In patent language it is the number of patents in class F03D. The numbers show quite an increase in published patent applications (16 – 25%). To examine the idea that Vestas is coming under pressure from other companies I looked at the development of the number of published patents from wind power companies. I made a general survey of patents issued to the market leading companies (and Asian companies) from 2007 -2009.

  From the results the conclusions in the article claiming that Vestas is under an increasing pressure does not make sense. Vestas is by far the technology leader when it comes to patents – technology. If there is pressure it has to be from Vestas costs or other market forces.  Looking at other patent classes the picture is somewhat different. But given the fact that these classes cover other technical areas the numbers does not diminish Vestas´s strength.

One thing I did wonder how ever was the fact that out of the 4869 patents published in class F03D in 2009 only 324 was from the companies mentioned in the article or on my list. Who applied for the remaining patents. The answer is somewhat surprising (probably not to the ones having market knowledge). For one thing a large number of seemingly lone inventors from South Korea are applying for patents in this area (supporting the awakening Asian tigers theory). I also found out that Mitsubishi has 600 patents and a company called Wobben Aloys has 1725 I total.  So my conclusion is that the claim that Vestas is going to be hard pressed the coming years is not founded in technology. Vestas emerges as the technology leader and has the IP to protect its turf.   

• Read More »

During the summer I missed the launch of the first US intellectual property enforcement strategy, by the U.S. Intellectual Property Enforcement Coordinator. Back from my holiday I read the 65 page strategy and found several interesting items. The strategy is divided in 6 different categories
(1) Leading by example
(2) Increasing transparency
(3) Ensuring efficiency and coordination
(4) Enforcing our rights internationally
(5) Securing our supply chain
(6) Building a data-driven Government
A few examples of the action items:
·         Establishment of a U.S. Government-Wide Working Group to Prevent U.S. Government Purchase of Counterfeit Products
·         Improved Transparency in Intellectual Property Policy-Making and International Negotiations (I´m sure the ACTA crowd will love this)
·         Coordination of National Law Enforcement Efforts to Avoid Duplication and Waste (always a good idea)
·         Improve the Effectiveness of Personnel Stationed Overseas to Combat Intellectual Property Infringement
·         Assessing the Economic Impact of Intellectual Property-Intensive Industries
The strategy has been developed by 8 agencies in corporation.

• Read More »

The star of Miami Vice and Nash Bridges has been awarded $ 23,2 million in a lawsuit against the production company Rysher Entertainment. The parties disagree over whether Don Johnson is entitled to syndication royalties from the Nash Bridges series. A jury found that he was entitled to the royalties. Rysher will of course appeal. 

This show just how close you have to pay attention to your contract as a performer, the extra attention could be worth millions.

• Read More »

No it´s not a new book, it´s actually a lawsuit. 

Some time ago I read a story about the estate of British author Adrian Jacobs claiming that his books were infringed by the Harry Potter stories. This has blossomed into a lawsuit that has now hit the US shores. In the lawsuit it is claimed that harry Potter infringes Willy the Wizard because of similarities in the plotline. An example from the lawsuit: Both Willy and Harry uncover the nature of this central task covertly in a bathroom (From the Goblet of fire). 

It is a sad lawsuit. Even if J.K. Rowling did get inspired by Willy the Wizard the copyright does not cover concepts or ideas. Furthermore if you compare Willy with Harry there are no similarities at all. It is a poor lawyer that does not read his case law and refuse to litigate a lost cause, unless you write litigation costs off as marketing. 

• Read More »

Penny Arcade has a pretty funny cartoon on paying for free content. The lure of the free is what is driving many gamers tu subscribe or buy unicorns.

• Read More »

The blog has been subject to the effects of summer holliday and heat wave…ill try and get back soon!

• Read More »

Boingboing reports that nine sculptures has been removed from an art exhibition In Japan at the request of Louis Vuitton. 

The sculptures are made from pirated designer bags and sport the LV logo. Even though the sculptures are very nicely done and comments on the pirate consumerism, LV wanted them gone. 

When judging the fairness of LV´s actions you could use Kristine Riskjærs “hvorfor fanden/why the hell” test. The test involves the question “why is it necessary to use the trademark?”. In this case the trademark is used to show how pirated goods are like locusts spreading fast and destroying good things in their path. The LV bags are some of the most well-known pirated goods and therefore a good trademark to use. 

So because there is a meaning of the use of the trademark and it is a piece of art I don’t think it should have been removed. 

See more about the sculptures here 

• Read More »

He didn´t get the position of president of the EPO but Jesper Kongstad got second place and is now the chairman of the EPO´s Administrative council. He even replaces the newly appointed president Benoît Battistelli as chairman. 

The administrative council is quite an important venue for promoting your views on IP and it will be of benefit for the Danish view to have a Dane at the head of the table. 

• Read More »

What would the ordinary person do in the following situation?
You work in a cinema. Its Saturday afternoon. You have a group of girls attending one of your screenings, obviously celebrating one of the girls birthday. The girls take pictures with their digital camera inside the theatre and you observe that one of the girls takes a video of the movie’s opening scene…about 1-2 minutes all in all.
What do you do?
a)    Leave the girls alone
b)    Advise the girls that taking video samples from the theatre on your camera is illegal and tells her to stop and delete the clip.
c)    Call the police and have the girl dragged away by the officer and put in detention on piracy charges
I know what I would do…I would choose a) or if I was in a rotten mood b).
The problem is that in real life the manager of a Muvico cinema in Illinois chose c). The girl was hauled away despite the fact that the officer recommended option b). Upon calling the Motion picture association it was recommended that option b) was used but still the manager insisted on the harshest piracy charges (according to Wired).
What did Movieco generate from their behavior towards protecting IP?
·         Terrified customers wondering if they can be punished for all kinds of things and therefore deciding to go to another movie theatre.
·         A huge amount of bad will because you use the legal system in such a trivial case and probably using it wrongly

·         Bad will towards IP in general

So before you go off the edge in your attempt to combat the real problem of IP piracy please think if your measures are proportional. One advice I was once given was to consider how the story would be presented in a tabloid paper, and if I could “defend” such a story. With the headline “Birthday girl imprisoned for taking pictures at birthday party in cinema” I would have a hard time defending that I was right demanding the girl punished…even if I was right (which I wouldn´t be).

• Read More »

A few days ago the US Supreme Court delivered its judgement in the long awaited Bilski vs Kappos case. 

In its decision the Supreme Court concludes that the business method in the Bilski patent is not patentable. As always the opinions are well written and very good at giving the historical perspective. 

The Court states that the machine or transformation test is not the exclusive threshold to pass for business method patents. That is the courts and patent office could use other tests as to determining patentability. The machine or transformation feels much like the “further technical effect” requirement of the EPC (see latest decision from the Enlarged Board of Appeal G003/08). 

In the minority opinion Judge Stevens, although agreeing with the conclusion, wishes to discuss the invention as a process rather than the machine or transformation test. He states that “The wiser course would have been to hold that petitioners’ method is not a “process” because it describes only a general method of engaging in business transactions—and business methods are not patentable.” Stevens (and the concurring judges) wants the case laid out as a matter of the process falling outside the word “process” in the constitution since a business method is not a real process. 

I like the majority opinion the best, since it is much more practicable than the minority opinion and a lot easier to communicate. 

• Read More »

A survey by Kelkoo Shows that 23 % of UK consumers would buy fake world cup merchandize. The same survey estimates that the losses are around £ 90 million, which is quite a lot. 

Football shirts have always been a favorite of the pirates. When I was in Africa the football shirt was the most worn shirt of all. And on markets across Denmark you see Barcelona shirts sporting the Messi name all over the place and in a lousy quality. 

A positive side of the Kelkoo survey is that only 11 % of consumers claim to knowingly have bought a fake product while 24 % have been “tricked” into buying fake products. 

Actually an interesting story is also that the UK Border agency has initiated a crackdown on fake football shirts during the World Cup in South Africa. Already 3200 fake shirts have been seized by authorities co-operating with trademarkowners like Addidas, Nike and Puma. In 2009 more than 50,000 counterfeit replica shirts, worth approximately £1.2m, were seized in total. See video on Youtube.

• Read More »

Via the 1709 blog I found a new report on the economics of copyright and digitization. To my disappointment the report only goes through existing research on the subject and concludes that more research is need. 

The only conclusion nearing anything interesting is that there does not seem to be evidence of strengthening of copyright and the supply of works. 

The report is done for the Strategic Advisory Board for Intellectual Property Policy (SABIP) which is is an independent, Non-Departmental Public Body with the UK Intellectual Property Office as sponsoring agency. 

• Read More »

In today’s Børsen (Danish newspaper) there is an article about Danish biotech company Nordic Bioscience who together with Novartis have developed a treatment for Osteoporosis. I found the patent family surrounding the new medicine. Those patents bear a major part of the blame for increasing the inventors fortune several billions DKK if the drug is succesful. 

The inventor Claus Christiansen is also a great example of how an inventor can create a successful company based on his profession (Claus is a medical doctor) 

• Read More »

I usually follow the IEEE Spectrum patent strength reports, and this year is no exception. This year the reading is even more interesting than usual. 

If innovation is measured in patents the US has a problem. All over the board we see American companies dropping like a sack of stones in the scorecard. As an example Xerox fell from a third place in electronics to a humble 15^th place. This is mirrored across in almost all sectors except in the software, hardware and aerospace areas. As a whole the percentage of U.S. organizations in the scorecards fell from 63% in 2007, to 54% in 2009. 

Japan on the other hand is this year’s big winner. In the electronics category they destroy all competition and sits firmly on 7 spots in the top 10, very impressive. 

As a small surprise there are now two non US universities among the 20 universities listed Pohang from South Korea and Oxford from UK. And it seems that innovation has shifted in the university sector as Texas, California, Florida and Iowa head the table. 

• Read More »

Today’s hottest IP story in Denmark is the Trial against Danish university Syd Dansk Universitet filed by a former researcher at the university.  

Researcher Peter Touborg is upset that SDU did not file for an American patent for his invention relating to calculating side effects of medicines (must be this patent). 

The invention is estimated to have a value of half a billion Danish kroner, which is why the researcher now is suing the university. 

The university claims that all due care have been taken when trying to commercialize the patent. 

The obvious conclusion to draw from this is that the valuation of market potential and patent strategy of the tech-trans unit in the university has been very poor. This should result in re-focusing of the tech-trans unit and its processes. Many tech-trans units are manned by employees who have many other administrative assignments in other areas of the university. When looking towards the best universities you see that the tech-trans units are driven as small businesses by business people and specialists only concerned with commercialization. A study I did some years ago show some common traits in the best American tech trans units. 

One thing I am missing in the articles however is who did the half a billion kroner valuation and how was it done? If I am to guess the valuation have been done by request of the researcher and the valuation could be biased. 

Anyway this case should be a wakeup call for universities to not only keep up their current work but improve their efforts. 

• Read More »

Via BoingBoing I found the movie “Walking on eggshells”. This is another interesting movie on mashups… with the same error as many others. Essentially the 24 minute movie is missing 24 minutes, namely the other side of the story.
In the movie all the participants are clearly critical of the current copyright regime and does not apply perspective to the subject of mashups. Most of the interviewed persons are happy to share their pocket philosophical opinion on copyright and most of them get it wrong. Furthermore they seem to think that they speak for the industry – art or music. One person says “for the museum or gallery business copyright is irrelevant” I find that very very hard to believe. Lastly the movie is plagued by the traditional analogies not fitting to the situation. An example is “Van Gogh´s incentive was not copyright” as an illustration of how useless copyright is. You cannot use an example from the early industrial revolution as an analogy for today’s society – you can’t compare van Gogh´s incentives to Britney Spears.
However I did enjoy the movie and want to see the next 24 minutes of the story. The most impressive part is however that the movie was made by students from Yale in a class called “Intellectual Property in the Digital Age” – that is both well executed and very creative thinking from lecturer Elizabeth Stark (although the reading list seems a bit biased).

• Read More »

Danish newspaper Berlingske Business has done a survey on the strongest Danish brands. The survey shows that Lego, Google and DR2 (Danish public television) tops the list. 

In my opinion the survey is not that well done. The survey focus on 4500 interviews with consumers and their opinion on 262 brands. I like the Interbrand method better, as it balances the role of the brand (consumer opinion etc.) with financial status and general brand strength. A signal of the value of the survey maybe is that retail chain SuperBest is the highest riser among the brands. It is odd that this brand is scored that high (159) since there has been a lot of bad PR surrounding the company. Also ranking McDonalds as the 4^th weakest brand in Denmark is a huge “mistake”. Using the Interbrand method McDonalds is the worlds 6^th strongest brand. 

So don´t put too much in the survey…it’s a consumer survey nothing else. 

• Read More »