Innovationpartners

Either google has let me down or a current story in Danish Newspaper Politiken is based on false information. Today Politiken has a story about the Olympic organization in London which wants to ban use of brands during the Olympics. If a brand is not an Olympic sponsor the spectators are not allowed to tweet about these brands or post stuff on Facebook.
I was shocked to say the least when I read that story. It is both stupid and impossible to try and censor peoples use of brand names in their tweets – and not to mention unsanctioned by law.
So I set out to get the original quote from LOCG spokesperson quoted in Politiken. That proved impossible. the quote only exists in Politikken and nowhere else - accessible by Google

I got Robert Sharp  who is also quoted in the article to comment(http://www.robertsharp.co.uk/2012/05/14/quoted-in-politiken/), and he doesn’t know who the LOCG spokesperson is either. He says that he commented on whether it is possible to censor Twitter and not on the quote itself.
The facts are:
In the purchase terms § 19.3.2 there is a text that says:
“The following is an illustrative list of prohibited and restricted behaviour within any Venue: fighting, public drunkenness, smoking, gambling, unauthorised money collection, any activity related to marketing or advertising (including, for the avoidance of doubt individual or group ambush marketing), activity or protest related to unions, political or religious subjects, sale of goods by unauthorised individuals or in unauthorised places (booths, mobile fast food restaurants, refreshment areas, etc), unauthorised Ticket sales, unauthorised transmissions and/or recording through mobile telephones or other instruments (video cameras, tape recorders, etc), entry of unauthorised journalists/reporters with taping or recording equipment and/or video cameras, flash photography, attempting to access restricted areas, requesting money or other goods without authorisation (for example, musicians or singers at the entrance or in the Venue, charity collectors, beggars), standing on Ticketed seats, interfering with the operation of a Session (including, for certain Sessions, the use of mobile telephones), disturbing other Ticket Holders’ enjoyment of a Session, disrupting the comfort or safety of other Ticket Holders and any other activity that LOCOG deems dangerous or inappropriate.”
 

That is hardly basis for a story like the one brought in Politiken. There is a previous story from January(http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-16426840) where volunteers are prohibited from tweeting about where they are and what is going on. So far I have not been able to find a source for this story.

This is an example of how one feather becomes five hens.

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Graphic designer Victor Herts has redone a bunch of well-known brands and logos to reflect what he calls “the actual content of the company, what they really should be called”. His logos comments on the effects of the products or services they represent. 

Always interesting to get a perspective. From now on when I drink a Carlsberg I will smile and think of calories.

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Sometimes you come across legal issues which will really challenge you. Originally that was how I got interested in patents and their relations to software. This Sunday afternoon I stumbled across another subject which easily could keep me entertained for hours.
Some would point out that encountering such subjects that require hours of pondering and researching is a sign of weakness of the current IP system. I would argue that a legal system cannot hope to contain a literal description of all possible problems and the analysis of new angles is unavoidable.
But to the case in point: Is language copyrightable?
Oracle and Google are involved in a long running legal battle over Android and Java – one of the issues is whether Java as a language is copyrightable.
On one side there is Oracle arguing that a language, especially a programming language is copyrightable because it has a specified effect. On the other side there is Google claiming that a language – including programming languages – are the medium of expression and therefore not protected. Google points to Na’vi and Dothraki as literary languages (Avatar and Game of Thrones) not protected by copyright.
In a European context I have sympathy for both arguments. On one hand the requirements in European copyright law are met  (there is an author, a creative effort and the creation is new). On the other hand the language is a container for works – as argued by Google.
I tend to support Oracle on this how about you?

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In a move called “the latest step in the patent arms race” Microsoft has just secured access to 1100 patents from AOL. MS has bought 800 of the patents and licensed the remaining 300 for a total of 1.056 bn $…which is a whole lot of cash.
I’m not sure it’s so much an arms race. In the old days MS would have bought the company, but since its only interested in the tech it just aquires the patents…makes sense.
It is like the big planets with the big IT companies – the bigger they get the more pull they have on other things in the universe.
Wired reports that the AOL patents has been auctioned meaning that other companies (Google, Apple etc. ) have also been offered an opportunity to get the patents.

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Today I read a comment in the Danish newspaper “Politiken” (haven’t found the article online). The comment was about Danish Rapper LOC giving his latest album away for free (or rather paid by a Danish phone company) and moving away from record company EMI. This move has been hailed as a rebellion against the conservative record publishers unwilling to adapt to the brave new world.
In the comment a guy from Copenhagen Records (small Danish label) gave me a new perspective on record labels and their work. His point was that if LOC was just moving away from his label to sell his own record and earn money for himself this was a harmful move to the music industry.
Why? Because record labels have another job besides publishing LOC, Madonna and Lady Gaga. Their job is to curate the many unpublished artists and develop new names. Each year a lot of the money earned from major artists are channeled towards the lesser artists and developing them. The point made was that when LOC takes away his money there is less to the small developing artists.
This is actually a good point I think.
The counter point is that there are examples of small artists publishing for free on Myspace, Facebook or what not and making it. The new economy guys will have us think that this is the marketing future of music. A darwinistic x-factor for the masses where only the networked survives. Arguably there is a good point there as well…but not the complete picture.
I asked one of my friends who is in publishing if the problem was the same in his business and his answer was yes. Each year the publishers make money from the bestsellers and try to develop new writers and publish niche books as well. This gives us broader access to cultural content – and makes us all richer.
So in my view it’s not a choice between one or the other business model for music – it is a fact that we need both. So the next time you want to tear down the major labels remember that they are nursing some of tomorrows artists from the money they make today.

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Chocolate is not just chocolate, especially around the chocolate holidays also known as Easter. Confectionary makers Lindt and Hauswirth has been fighting over chocolate bunnies the last 8 years.

The parties disagree about whether Hauswirth is allowed to market a chocolate bunny that is very similar to one marketed and trademarked by Lindt. (See picture below)

A few days ago an Austrian Court decided that Huswirth is indeed infringing on the Lindt bunny and thereby risk confusing the consumers. The two bunnies are very much alike. At first I thought “ a bunny is a bunny…nobody can monopolize the bunny image.” Then I researched the Lindt history a bit. The golden bunny has a 60 year anniversary this year – which gives it an iconic status and makes you ask why Hauswirth wants to market a product that looks almost identical to Lindts? The answer is of course: to leech on the icon status of the original.

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The last few years the UK has been funding a number of reviews of the UP IP system. First Gowers then Hargreaves. Now they are doing it once again, but at the meta level. The All-Party Parliamentary Intellectual Property Group in the United Kingdom is now researching the role of Government in developing IP.

The Group intends to look at a range of issues including:

· The purpose and goal of IP policy

· Where and how IP policy is developed in Government

· How IP policy has developed and been co-ordinated within the digital policy environment

· How the Government interacts and co-ordinates IP policy at an international level

· How policy impacting the protection of IP is co-ordinated across departments

The result is to be used to better understand how IP policy is developed and whether it could be improved

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The last few weeks I have been guest blogging and debating acta – hence the lack of blogging here.
One thing that really made me think was the demonstrations all around Europe against ACTA. Not that I want to reconsider the justification of ACTA or the treaty itself. What I want to change is the approach to “marketing” IP. If you can’t make people understand why we have IP you are going to have some trouble.
More resources must be given to education and policy development involving consumers. If not IP will suffer from the lack of support

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Today ACTA supporters hacked the Danish Patent and Trademark Office to show their respect of the people demonstrating against the treaty. The Office has a post on their official blog on the subject.

The interesting part is that arguments about patents, trademarks and designs have been almost nonexistent in the Danish ACTA debate – apart from a few persons arguing that African access to medicines will be harmed. So why attack the patent office. Since the ACTA crowd is often linked to the open source crowd could it be payback from the debate about software patents? And how can a privacy breach be a display of respect?

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I did a guest posting on Danish Blog Webfronten about ACTA.

The post is in Danish and tries to tackle some of the myths about what ACTA does and does not do.

Today there is a hearing about ACTA, which I am sure is going to be interesting.

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Yesterday the European Court of Justice made an important decision relating to social networks and copyright infringement in the case SABAM vs. Netlog. The court decided that “in the light of the requirements stemming from the protection of the applicable fundamental rights, must be interpreted as precluding an injunction made against a hosting service provider which requires it to install the contested filtering system.”
This means that as the host of a social network – in this case Netlog, but the ruling applies to other social networks as well – you are not required to filter the subscribers traffic to log copyrighted materials. The case was brought by the Belgian collectors society SABAM which represents copyright owners.
The court decided that the filtering requirement as proposed by SABAM did not respect “the requirement that a fair balance be struck between, on the one hand, the protection of the intellectual-property right enjoyed by copyright holders, and, on the other hand, that of the freedom to conduct business enjoyed by operators such as hosting service providers”.

So essentially the social networks are free of draconian surveillance requirements from the IP owners. Such measures has been very thing that has driven recent ACTA resistance. You should think that some of the news sites bringing negative ACTA stories would pick the story up…but of course they haven’t. Maybe it´s because it was only yesterday the ruling came out – and has since been quoted on most of the IP blogs I read. Maybe it´s because the ruling contradicts most of the disinformation about ACTA that is out there.

SABAM´s press statemet here

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The fable about the boy who cried wolf is not entirely true anymore. In the fable the more the boy cries wolf the less the people believes in him, resulting in the sheep getting eaten.
At present there are hundreds of articles about potential or envisioned problems with IP (the boy crying wolf) but instead of getting tired of hearing the warnings people start believing more firmly that the wolf IS coming. There are literally hundreds of newspaper stories about some of the high profile IP cases, fx Eolas vs Microsoft or Apple vs Samsung to name a few. Most of these articles describe the perceived or potential danger which seldom shows up in the end (contrary to the wolf in the fable). But still the people believe – not pausing to consider the past cries of the coming wolf. Furthermore the hundreds of articles leading up to the decision of a case – containing criticism of the IP regime – will not be matched with the same number of stories about the threat turning out to be false. The result is a massive overweight in negative articles about IP. How do you think that will influence the general attitude towards IP?
The last example that made me think of this was an article on Wired the other day. Under the headline: Patent Troll Claims Ownership of Interactive Web – And Might Win. My thoughts were: this is going to be one of those days!
But Today it turns out that the sky wasn’t falling. Under the headline: Texas Jury Strikes Down Patent Troll’s Claim to Own the Interactive Web. The case closes nicely with the patents concerned deemed invalid. A very un-scientific statistic show that the first story was tweeted 1040 times and quoted on Facebook 946 times where the follow up story was tweeted 818 times and on Facebook 343 times. A nice illustration of how danger is more appealing than safety.

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The USPTO has launched a competition where participants compete to get their patent applications in a fast track at the patent office. The initiative is called: Patents for Humanity

Entrants in 4 different fields can apply. If their patents are judged to have a humanitarian effect that patent could be selected as a winner.

The four areas are:

• Medical Technology
• Food & Nutrition
• Clean Technology
  
• Information Technology
  

I think this is a really good idea and am very excited to follow this initiative. Hopefully it proves that small incentives can go a long way.

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For about 2 weeks I have had a post on my slate relating to a BoingBoing post ”Insane copyright ruling”. I have been circling the post not having time to write it up and maybe not having grasped the right angle of the story.
This morning thinking of my last ACTA post about disinformation I suddenly saw the angle. This post is also about disinformation.
In the BoingBoing story there is mention of a UK court ruling limiting free expression and that “The judge here ruled that the idea of the image was the copyright, not the image itself.” The story quotes an article in “Amateur Photographer” and a lawyer in the article.
One of the dangers from not reading the ruling itself but relying on 3^rd party reports is that you risk promoting statements that are biased or untrue. This seems to be the case here.

The subject matter is a photoshopped image of a typical London bus in a specific location in London. A tea company has used a very similar picture on their boxes and is sued for copyright infringement. (see pictures below).

 In the case the QC clearly states that he does not accept that the protection does not cover as broadly as they wish it to do (at 62). What the judge does is apply the “why the hell…” test. It’s a test one of my friends formulated many years ago I relation to trademarks but it will work in many other areas. The test involves asking the question “why the hell do you want to design the picture in this way?” The answer in this case is “because I want to piggyback on the original picture. As the judge states “I sympathise with Mr Houghton in his wish to use an image of London landmarks. He is free to do so. There are entirely independent images of the same landmarks available to be used which predate publication of Mr Fielder’s picture. But the defendants do not want to use those, no doubt for their own good reasons. Perhaps they did not look as attractive as the claimant’s image?”
Therefore there is no monopoly of the motifs as a result of this ruling. Likewise the example given in the BoingBoing article about press photographers taking pictures of the same person is very misleading. Also the judge stresses that this is a very specific case and therefore the impact will not be general to English copyright law. I am sure that the outcome would be similar in Denmark although I would try the case as more of a marketing law case than a copyright case.
What both the original article in Amateur Photographer and BoingBoing misses is the fact that the copyright owner and the tea company has been involved in court proceedings several times the last few years and this is the last attempt of the tea company to avoid paying royalties which they agreed to in 2010.
This is another example of how half-truths or less is used to hack away on the current IP system spreading the idea that the system doesn’t work. I’m not saying that the system works perfectly but it works a lot better than the opposition would like us all to think.

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The last few days ACTA has been acting up in Denmark. My guess is the perceived SOPA success in the US has inspired grassroots to try their luck once more. And with some success. The Danish minister for Trade has been asked to answer questions about ACTA in the parliament.
What is interesting is the amount of disinformation which is connected to ACTA. It got so bad that MP Trine Bramsen had to ask her Facebook followers to read up on the subject before submitting their opinions to her. Little did that help. Last night I spent some time debunking myths and misinterpretations about ACTA in a discussion on Trines opinions posted on Facebook. It is very obvious that opposition is in two categories- the ones who does not understand what is going on but are not afraid to promote their opinion and who are 100% certain of the truth of said opinion. Then there are the ones out for a general IP bashing using ACTA as an excuse.
So the status is that there are all kinds of information about ACTA being spewed out, most of it untrue and more confusing than clarifying.

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A lot of media reports that Nokia has sold 450 of their patents to Italian licensing company Sisvel. Even though Danish Computerworld goes as far as claiming that it is one 6^th of the Nokia portfolio (closer to one percent) and the rest of the reports claim that the sale is a big thing the fact is that this is a very small deal.
Looking at the press release it is obvious that the numbers are misinterpreted. Yes the deal concerns 450 patents, but only in 47 patent families. This means that the deal is about 47 inventions and not 450.
But…It is interesting that Nokia is selling off technology that is not essential to keep in-house. Nokia retains licensing rights to the patents. What Sisvel gains is an opportunity to further license those patents. How big the financial gains for Nokia remains to be seen. Nokia cuts IP costs but whether the licensing agreement gives the company billions is doubtful. I see the deal as cost cutting more than increasing revenue.

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 It has been a long time since I gave the EPO appeal decisions a closer look so today I browsed thru some of the last quarter decisions from the Boards of Appeal. And as always I found some interesting stuff – all about information.

 In T 1086/07 Xerox had applied for a patent for a “Method and system for generating document summaries with navigation information”. The patent was rejected and appealed. The BoA decided that the patent application was relating to presentation of information and therefore not patentable.  Even though the BoA scolds the patent office a bit they clearly state that the claimed invention has no technical contribution and even if it did it would be obvious to a skilled person.

The Board reached the same conclusion in T 1235/07 where Microsoft tried to patent “NAVIGATING DATA POINTS IN A MULTIDIMENSIONAL DATABASE”. The application is in its essence about sorting customer data by different dimensions and is of course rejected by both the EPO and the BoA. The EPO rejects the application due to obviousness but is corrected by the BoA which points out that what is sought patented is merely a presentation of information. And comes the part that I really love about this decision: The BoA does not stop by referring to a general point about presentation of information but digs out the travaux préparatoires from the 1970 Washington Conference (PCT) to document their opinion. That is an awesome move, and exactly why I love the legal profession.

Yet another decision tree type application was considered in T 0844/07 where Computer Associates tried to patent “DIRECTORY SEARCHING METHODS AND SYSTEMS” – unsuccessfully. The claims in the application are long and seems - even to me – trivial. As the BoA says “The essential idea of the invention was the realisation that a more efficient search could be achieved by providing further searchable forms of attribute values in a second table, each additional form having a component identifier that could be specified in the search instruction.” This time the application is not denied because of “presentation of information” concerns but because of a lack of inventive step.

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Today I read a story about Louis Vuitton suing somebody again. This time it´s Warner brothers because of the use of a fake Louis Vuitton bag in the movie Hangover 2.

In the movie one of the characters claim that his travelling bag is a LV, although it is a fake. See the clip with the bag here. Nobody has any chance of determining whether the bag is fake or not. Still LV is upset since a fake bag is claimed to be a LV bag.

There can only be one result of this case and that is yet another loss for LV. The scene is a commentary to both the luxury good cult and the fact that many people brandish their knock offs like they were the real thing. Instead of suing Warner brothers LV should have engaged the company in a more intelligent way fx with a suggestion that the fake bag has some role to play in the movie.
This is yet another example of dinosaur enforcement (enforcement like in the ancient days). With all those silly lawsuits by LV its no wonder their goods are so expensive.

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Branding blog “branding strategy insider” has a fascinating post about the most influential slogans and taglines in the US. The impressive part is not what brand has the most influential tagline, but which brand has most longevity. I was surprised that a lot of well known brands has slogans that are older than me and still in use.

• Melts in your mouth, not in your hands, M&M 1954
  
• They’re gr-r-r-eat!, Kellogs 1950´ies
  
• Finger-lickin’ good!, KFC 1952
  
• We try harder, Avis 1962
  
• Because I’m worth it, L´Oreal 1967
  
• Have it your way, Burger King 1973
  

These are examples of how the right brand can make your company shine across generations. Some of the examples on the list has slipped into our daily language as ways of speech but still relates to the brand behind the words.

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Thompson has published this year’s list over the world’s most innovative companies – from a technological view. Several factors are compiled to make the list, which contain several interesting points.
No Danish companies in the top 100 but our Swedish neighbors make up about 7% of the most innovative companies.
Different regions have different strengths or focus areas: USA does semiconductors and electronic components, Asia does computer hardware and cars and Europe does machinery.
The companies on the top 100 list created 400.000 new jobs in 2010 and ¾ of the companies saw an increase in stock value. Innovation is the mother of growth it would seem.
It is remarkable that only 4 software companies are on the list. Has software lost its innovation power? To be fair companies like Apple and IBM are software companies as well but are listed as hardware producers. Also there are only 2 pharma companies on the list, which is surprising to me.
In my opinion there are several conclusions to be drawn from the list.
For one that innovation is the key to growth, the problem being supporting an innovative culture. Many of the companies on the list are well known for their integrated innovative company culture, which mean that in order to ensure growth companies must be living innovation not just doing innovation as a bi-product.
Second it is interesting that the analysis does not include a green focus. Not just to see which companies are the most innovative in green tech – and indeed if there are any in the top 100. But also to see if there is the necessary innovation in green technologies. If you take the “petroleum” category, this could be a sign of research activity in better use of fossil fuels. This category is at the bottom of the list. Chemicals could be an indicator of green tech and is doing pretty well. A comparable analysis of the top 100 most green innovation companies could be interesting.

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The Danish Patent and Trademark office just launched a new portal to encourage transfer of knowledge. The site although it has a somewhat long and very Danish sounding name (IP-Handelsportal) collects a lot of useful information and templates for startups wanting to sell or license IP. There is even 4 different standard contracts. The aim of the portal is to save innovative companies time and money.

One of the parts I really liked is the area describing different ways of valuating IP. The website also offers Excel templates for conducting evaluations of your patent, trademark or design.

What companies or the lone inventor will find difficult about the portal is getting started with all the information. A new startup may not be capable of making a market analysis or an overview over available protection methods. A more thorough guide would be helpful here…but then again consultants have to make a living too.

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IP strategy should be a central part of your company’s daily business. The strategy could have a direct impact on decisions being made. IBM´s new service - SIIP – demonstrates just what such an impact could be. SIIP is a platform that aggregates patent and scientific literature data and offers powerful search and analytics capabilities (it chews your food for you). This allows a company to map the technologies needed to produce new products or services. The map will show some areas that are littered with expired patents, some that are heavily fortified and some that are only described in journals. This allows your company to identify which road not to take, potential partners and unseen opportunities. In the figure below I sketched out three companies – Blue, red and green.

Blue wants to market a new product but red and green have more advanced technologies. So what to do? Collaborate with red – looks expensive. Collaborate with green – looks less expensive. Promote a cheaper product less advanced? Or use the white spots which are expired patents or non-patented technology (yes there is such a thing)? Your decision will depend on what your company wants to sell – a high end product, a cheap “copy” or a niche product. With the right information your choice gets easier. Read more about SIIP here:

http://www-935.ibm.com/services/us/gbs/bao/siip/

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In a Danish newspaper today is a story about a woman who did some internet shopping and ended up with less than she hoped for.
The woman saw a Canada Goose jacket online at 1/3 of the normal price. Ignoring a lot of warning signs she buys the jacket. When the jacket arrives it is everything but original. The quality is appaling and in the deal she got an awful smell as well. The manufacturer (which is not the Canada Goose company) saved some money on not cleaning the feathers of the unfortunate birds stuffed in the jacket as filling. This of course results in the organic materials in the feathers rotting – with a pretty disgusting smell surrounding the jacket.
What surprises me is the fact that this woman (a school teacher) ignored all the signals clearly signaling that this is of course a fake jacket she is buying.

• The price, if it’s too good to be true, that’s just what it is
  
• The vendor. I saw the website and it looks all fake. If she had bothered checking up on the site, she would have found out that the website is listed as a site selling fake jackets…by Canadian Goose! I tested some of the other sites and it is very obvious that they are fake. For one thing the sites in Danish language are horribly translated probably via Google translate.
  
• The origin. The jacket is shipped out of Shanghai and the company mail address is a Hotmail address.
  

And still she bought the jacket. Why? Because she probably knew it was fake but hoped that  the quality would be ok and saved some money. Instead she got a smelly rag and lost her money. The incredible thing is that in the article it is said that she bought an original jacket afterwards but still wears the fake one when walking the dog…what’s up with that?
Many years ago I heard a story about a guy buying a fake Canadian Goose jacket with the same result as in this case. I always wondered if it was an urban legend. Now I know its true.

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Yesterday’s blogpost made me think of something a colleague told me recently.
Apart from his day job he is a photographer and is selling his snapshots through a licensing company. Let’s start with the ending: He had discovered that his pictures had been used in 35 websites without compensation from the licensing company. This represented around 32.000 DKK which is not much but still a nice sum.
He is one of the starving artists that Neelie Kroes was talking about and he got cheated, not by copyright but by a licensing company and maybe internet users.
However my colleague is different from Ms. Kroes image of the starving artist – he anticipated the problem and was prepared. He has set up a system where he himself regularly scans the net for his pictures and compares his results with the reports from the licensing company. The results show how big the problem is and who the sinners are. It also gives him a good starting point for a dialogue with his licensing company.
The difference lies in thinking business. Starving artists today need to have a commercial sense as well as an artistic one. Not all artists need to graduate from the business academies but even a small effort could raise their income and make them less starving.
If you want to know more about the system of my colleague don’t hesitate contacting me.

Speaking of starving artists…that subject always makes me think of Knut Hamsuns Novel “Sult” where a starving artist walks around trying to make a living. The movie is very good as well.

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In a speech given by Neelie Kroes Vice-President of the European Commission at the Forum d´Avignon last week, the Commissioner really got my blood pressure up. The speech was called “who feeds the artist” and centered about copyright.
The commissioner asked if “the current copyright system the right and only tool to achieve our objectives?” In her opinion the copyright is a trollish system seeming evil to consumers and not rewarding the artists.
Instead she suggests the following “ICT can help in other ways too, supporting a system of recognition and reward. A Global Repertoire database to find out what belongs to whom. Tracking technologies, to permit a totally transparent process for artists and intermediaries to find out who is looking at what artwork when and to distribute revenues accordingly. Digitisation, to make artworks available for instant transmission to distant fans.”
Basically she suggests that all content on the net (any net, any platform) is monitored and revenues are taken from the users and distributed to the artists. Even if such a model was even remotely possible, is it desirable? And the result would be that the popular artists get all the money, not the struggling ones that Ms. Kroes wants to support. Reviewing data from Danish public libraries reveal that people go for the main stream and not for the niche.
Her quick fix to the copyright system is flexibility that allows many business models. Especially licensing must be made easier. Out with the old rules in with the new. Licensing is easy already. What is needed is for the collection societies and distributors to open up more and create cross platform licensing agreements – One license to rule all platforms. Such a move requires the artists to demand this from their organizations and publishers.
Ms. Kroes has jumped the IP-bashing bandwagon and as many others she does not bring any new suggestions to frameworks, business models or regulation with her.

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