Pamela Samuelson

High Technology Entrepreneurs and the Patent System: Results of the 2008 Berkeley Patent Survey

We offer description and analysis of the 2008 Berkeley Patent Survey, summarizing the responses of 1,332 U.S.-based technology startups in the biotechnology, medical device, IT hardware, software, and Internet sectors. We discover that holding patents is more widespread among technology startups than has been previously reported, but that the patterns and drivers of holding patents are industry and context specific. Surprisingly, startup executives report in general that patents are providing relatively weak incentives for core activities in the innovation process. Our analysis uncovers that the drivers of startup patenting are often associated with capturing competitive advantage, and the associated goals of preventing technology copying, securing financing, and enhancing reputation - although again these and other motives depend on firm and industry factors. We also find substantial differences in the roles played by patents for startups in the biotechnology and medical device sectors - where patents are more commonly used and considered important - as compared to those operating in the software and Internet fields - where they are less useful. Interestingly, venture-backed IT hardware startups tend to resemble those in health-related fields in terms of their use of and motives for patenting. We generally find a wide disparity between the patenting behavior of venture-backed technology startups and those that are not funded with venture capital. We also discover that, when choosing not to patent major innovations, startups often cite to cost considerations, although again the motives to forgo patenting differ according to firm and industry characteristics. The respondents to our survey also generally report that checking the patent literature and licensing patents from others is reasonably common, although there too results differ according to the context. Other findings are discussed.

The Law and Economics of Reverse Engineering

II. REVERSE ENGINEERING IN TRADITIONAL MANUFACTURING INDU STRIES ..................................................................................... 1582 A. A Legal Perspective on Reverse Engineering .......................... 1582 B. An Economic Perspective on Reverse Engineering ................. 1585 C. Anti-Plug-Mold Laws: An Exception to Reverse Engineering Rules? .................................................................. 1591

DRM {and, or, vs.} the law

The main purpose of DRM is not to prevent copyright infringement but to change consumer expectations about what they are entitled to do with digital content.

A Manifesto concerning the Legal Protection of Computer Programs

character, they would likely be regarded as unprotectable by copyright law. 51 1.4 Programs Are Industrial Compilations of Applied Know-How 1.4.1 Program Construction Requires Selection and Arrangement of

Privacy as Intellectual Property

Some economists and privacy advocates have proposed giving individuals property rights in their personal data to promote information privacy in cyberspace. A property rights approach would allow individuals to negotiate with firms about the uses to which they are willing to have personal data put and would force businesses to internalize a higher proportion of the societal costs of personal data processing. However, granting individuals property rights in personal information is unlikely to achieve information privacy goals in part because a key mechanism of property law, namely, the general policy favoring free alienability of such rights, would more likely defeat than achieve information privacy goals. Drawing upon certain concepts from the unfair competition-based law of trade secrecy, this article suggests that information privacy law needs to impose minimum standards of commercial morality on firms engaged in the processing of personal data and proposes that certain default licensing rules of trade secrecy law may be adapted to protect personal information in cyberspace.

Intellectual property rights for digital library and hypertext publishing systems: an analysis of Xanadu

Copyright law is being applied to works in digital form. The special character of digital media will inevitably require some adjustments in the copyright model if digital libraries and hypertext publishing environments are to become as commercially viable as the print industries have been. An intellectual property system works only when it embodies a reasonably accurate model of how people are likely to behave, but it is hard to predict author and reader behavior in an environment that has yet to be built. By far the most ambitious proposal for a digital library and hypertext publishing environment is Ted Nelson’s Xamdu system. This paper reviews the intellectual property scheme in Xanadu and contrasts it with current copyright law. Xanadu’s predictions about reader and author behavior are examined in light of how people currently behave in computer conferencing, electronic mail, and similar existing systems. These analyses identify some respects in which intellectual property systems might have to be changed to make digital libraries and hypertext publishing systems viable.

IBM's pragmatic embrace of open source

Open source has changed the intellectual property landscape of the software industry.

Copyright and digital libraries

This issue of Communications highlights some of the many projects underway for the creation or enhancement of digital libraries. At the moment, no one seems to think there will be only one gargantuan digital library to sate the publics appetite for information. Rather, the expectation is that there will be many digital libraries, most of which will have specialized collections and will be internetworked together in a way loosely resembling todays Internet. Most digital library project planners are aware there are intellectual property issues that must be resolved in order to successfully deploy their libraries. Some proposals for digital library projects express an intent to resolve intellectual property issues as part of the overall plan for the library, albeit without much specificity about how this would be achieved in their systems [2, 4].

Intellectual property rights and the global information economy

T he challenges that digital technologies pose for national and international regulation of intellectual property rights are receiving considerable attention these days from governmental commissions. In September 1995 the Clinton administration’s National Information Infrastructure Task Force Working Group on Intellectual Property Rights issued its White Paper on Intellectual Property and the National Information Infrastructure [4]. Two months before, the Commission of the European Communities issued its Green Paper on Copyright and Related Rights in the Information Society [2]. By early 1996, the Commission expects this document to ripen into a White Paper. (Green Paper is a draft; White Paper contains final proposals.) Similar documents have emerged from Canadian and Australian authorities, while Japanese efforts have focused on developing a plan for an efficient and workable international multimedia rights clearance system so that the promising multimedia industry will not be stillborn on account of exorbitant transaction costs in doing rights clearances. The World Intellectual Property Organization (WIPO) is also sponsoring a set of meetings to consider a possible supplementary agreement (a “protocol”) to the Berne Convention (the principal international treaty on copyPamela Samuelson

Copyright's fair use doctrine and digital data

The digitization of works renders them not only easy to copy and distribute. It makes them easy to transform from one medium to another. Many of the same fair use questions posed by the copying or use of computer programs recur when other kinds of digital data are copied or manipulated. There are some situations in which digital copying would almost certainly be permitted as fair use, and some in which fair use defenses would be futile.