French court orders Google to stop Books project

The LA Times reports that Google has lost its first major court case involving its controversial book digitization project.

A Paris court ruled this week that Google's project violated French copyright law and that Google must pay a large fine and take down French works cited in the case. This ruling comes hot on the heels of a large settlement between Google and a number of US publishers and authors.

Right before the the court ruling, Nicolas Sarkozy pledged 750,000 Euros to support an all-French book digitization project.

The French objection to Google seems to have as much to do with wanting to preserve French culture as it does with disapproval of Google's interpretation of copyright law.

US Customs to Santa: "Don't put fakes in the stockings"

Taking a new direction from their traditional holiday warnings (Make sure that turkey is fully cooked! Make the neighborhood kids shovel the walk if you have a heart condition!), the federal government today issued a warning against buying unlicensed knockoff products as gifts this holiday season.

According to this AP report, US Customs and Border Protection wants to remind everyone that, besides being illegal, counterfeit products may not conform to the same safety standards as the genuine article.

It's worth noting here that a significant benefit of registering a trademark with the USPTO is that customs will work to prevent unlicensed fakes from entering the country. Learn more here and here.

Patent exchange to launch next year

CNN Money reports that a Chicago-based patent exchange is set to launch in February. The exchange will function like a stock exchange by selling and promoting shares of patent licenses.

This is a unique approach to selling intellectual property. Traditionally, patent licensing deals happened behind closed doors; this exchange will publish prices on its website.

According to the article, experts seem to predict that the exchange will either represent a breakthrough in valuing intellectual property or it will result in an uncontrollable tidal wave of litigation. Either way, it will be interesting to watch it develop.

Outstanding copyright tool

Have a look at this terrific copyright term slide-rule thingy created by Michael Brewer and the ALA Office for Information Technology Policy.

Part of the reason I love it so much is that I once spent an entire afternoon trying to make a flowchart to convey the same information. (It's impossible.)

This Michael Brewer guy has made some pretty far-out guides to intellectual property, which you can check out via Stanford's Copyright and Fair Use Center blog here.

USPTO announces that it is now slightly easier being green

In a press release in which the word "green" appeared 12 times, the USPTO announced Monday a new incentive to give a leg-up to inventors who have filed patent applications for technologies designed to help reduce greenhouse gas emissions and improve energy efficiency.

Under the initiative, applicants who have a pending application in a qualifying technology can petition to have their applications moved to the front of the queue. The first 3000 proper petitions will be given the accelerated examination.

Inventors Digest breaks it down clearly here.

Let the Green Rush begin!

Hot off the Federal Register, USPTO plan to help small entities move patent applications more quickly

During these tough times, it seems everybody's asking "Where's my stimulus?" For some small-entity patent applicants, the USPTO has come through with a Patent Application Backlog Reduction Stimulus Plan.

The USPTO announced in Friday's Federal Register a program that would allow small entities with multiple pending applications to elect to abandon one application and allow one further down the queue to take its place. That means that, for example, if my application from 2006 is no longer of use to me, but I have one from 2008 that's looking promising, I can request that the USPTO dump the 2006 app and move the 2008 up to the older application's spot in line. It's a win-win: the inventor gets a quicker patent issue and the USPTO gets to drop some dead-weight patent applications from their workload.

Read the full announcement here to get the details.

UK pub fined because of customer's illegal filesharing

CNET picked up a scary story from its UK sister site ZDNet UK about a pub (that's English for bar) being dinged because a customer used its open WiFi network to download copyrighted material.

Questions about liability in an open internet connection plague us on this side of the Atlantic, too. Copyright holders have put pressure on Internet Service Providers to police the users on their networks; current copyright law in the US limits the liability of service providers.

It will be interesting to see if Internet cafes (or pubs) will begin to either close their networks or stop offering them altogether as a result of this action.