It’s patented! (but it just won’t work)
It has been hard not to notice the recent 10 year sentence for a conman selling bomb and drug detectors across the world - which cannot have worked. Fake bomb…
Revealed: The Biggest Trademark Bullies
Over at Trademarkia, the big trademark search engine, there is an illuminating section suitable for Friday afternoons. You can look up what they describe as the 'biggest trademark bullies' by…
Cory Doctorow and ‘The Copyright Thing’
If you've read a book by Cory Doctorow, you may be familiar with what he describes as his "pretty unorthodox views about copyright". If you haven't read one, or better…
Top Toy For Your Dog – and it’s patented
If you're searching for a new toy for your dog, what do you look for? Something novel? Something which is not obvious? Of course you would and your wish has…
Is Bioprospecting Legitimate Research or Biopiracy?
by Graham Dutfield (originally published 26 May 2003 on scidev.net) Summary A growing number of critics of 'bioprospecting' complain that companies often fail to adequately compensate holders of traditional knowledge,…
U.S. Claims Global Jurisdiction of .net and .com Web Sites: Is .edu Next?
By Jim Farmer On January 13, a UK magistrate ruled a 23-year-old student can be extradited to the United States for running a website posting links to pirated TV shows…
Eleventh Meeting of the Conference of the Parties (COP 11)
The eleventh meeting of the Conference of the Parties (COP 11) starts today in Hyderabad, India, and continues until the 19th October 2012. COP 11 will include a high-level ministerial…
Stephan Kinsella – Rethinking IP Completely
If you haven't listened to Stephan Kinsella speaking on intellectual property, here is one of his lectures, presented at the Ludwig von Mises Institute's 2008 Austrian Scholars Conference, the international,…
Access and Benefit Sharing e-learning
Natural Justice has written a draft e-module that provides an introduction to Access and Benefit Sharing (ABS) and its implications for indigenous peoples and local communities. It explores the implications of…
Traditional Knowledge and Plant Genetic Resources Guidelines
The Southern Africa Network for Biosciences (SANBio) / NEPAD Planning and Coordinating Agency [SANBio/NEPAD Agency] have compiled an extremely interesting set of guidelines relating to plant genetic resources and traditional…