intellectual property

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Free The Seed: OSSI Nurtures Growing Plants Without Patent Barriers

Nancy Owano | Phys.org | April 19, 2014

[The Open Source Seed Initiative] is concerned over restricting access to seeds through patents. They are stirring up public awareness over their mission to model a new crop system of seed-sharing in the spirit of open source software. On Thursday the OSSI group gathered at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, to give away a set of seeds that can be used by anyone. Read More »

From Open Source Software To Open Source Hardware

Robert Viseur | FLOSShub | September 1, 2012

The open source software principles progressively give rise to new initiatives for culture (free culture), data (open data) or hardware (open hardware). The open hardware is experiencing a significant growth but the business models and legal aspects are not well known. This paper is dedicated to the economics of open hardware. Read More »

Google: It's Time To Take Action Against Patent Trolls, Privateering

Rachel King | ZDNet | April 5, 2013

Google bands together with BlackBerry and Red Hat as it continues its offensive to defend itself against patent suits. Read More »

Health IT Innovation? Not Without Open Platforms

The issue here is closed platforms, which enable most EHR vendors to position themselves as the single source of innovation. They also create dependent customers and glacial progress in two parallel areas of innovation—evidence-based medicine and information technology.  No one company can keep up with the natural pace of advancement in either realm, let alone both. Read More »

Honouring Aaron Swartz, Internet Activist

Michael Geist | The Tyee | January 22, 2013

Digital rights advocate's death places spotlight on more open access to info. The Internet community has been reeling for the past week as it grapples with the suicide of Aaron Swartz, a prominent digital rights activist who left a remarkable legacy for a 26-year-old... Read More »

House Takes Senate's Bad Internet Censorship Bill, Tries Making It Worse

Nate Anderson | Ars Technica | November 5, 2011

Imagine a world in which any intellectual property holder can, without ever appearing before a judge or setting foot in a courtroom, shut down any website's online advertising programs and block access to credit card payments. The credit card processors and the advertising networks would be required to take quick action against the named website; only the filing of a “counter notification” by the website could get service restored.

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How Aaron Swartz's Cause Wins In The End

Eric Posner | Slate | January 22, 2013

[... The] facts no longer matter: By becoming a martyr to open access, Swartz has, for better or worse, dealt a blow to government efforts to delegitimize hackers and their values. Read More »

How Are EHR Contracts Getting More Difficult?

Ron Sterling | Avoid EHR Disasters | December 19, 2011

EHR contracts contain an increasing array of complicating structures and dense terms that offer fewer and fewer commitments to your practice... Read More »

How Are Open Source And Cloud Computing Compatible?

It seems everyone is rushing to get their software on the cloud. The rapid growth of cloud computing has empowered hyperscaler cloud providers to market various technologies to feed the growing demand. Hyperscalers are now providing full-stack capabilities to increase their footprint and further lock-in customers, making the cloud seem more like a threat than an open communal space. What does the cloud actually offer? Quite a lot, based on reports from the field:

How Billionaire "Philanthropy" Is Fueling Inequality And Helping To Destroy The Country

Prashanth Kamalakanthan | Truthout | August 19, 2013

Peter Buffett, the second son of billionaire investor Warren Buffett, worries that the state of philanthropy in America “just keeps the existing structure of inequality in place.” At meetings of charitable foundations, he says “you witness heads of state meeting with investment managers and corporate leaders. All are searching for answers with their right hand to problems that others in the room have created with their left.” [...] Read More »

How Congress Is Aiming To Defang Patent Trolls

Tim Fernholz | Quartz | October 24, 2013

A new bill in the US Congress is aimed at curbing firms that buy patents and use them aggressively to extract licensing fees—a.k.a. patent trolls. Read More »

How Maker Communities Align with Open Source

The maker movement intersects deeply with open source. When I think of open source I normally think of the most hardcore bleeding-edge software or hardware development. But the maker movement has a long-established sharing culture, which really is nothing less than pure open source. The source code is a little different, however. For example, consider Nicole Curtis, the maker celebrity and TV star of Rehab Addict...

Hyperledger Project Reflects on Blockchain Politics

Ian Allison | International Business Times | January 27, 2017

Like any community, the blockchain world is also a political arena. Powerful consortia have emerged in a race to production, licencing spats occur and there's even a risk that patent enforcements could freeze innovation. The Hyperledger Project, which is now a major player in the space, gives blockchain the Linux Foundation treatment: fostering a series of open multi-stakeholder technology projects. Brian Behlendorf, the executive director of the Hyperledger Project, is a primary developer of the Apache Web server and a founding member of the Apache Software Foundation...

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IBM Sics Cloud on Drug Patents

Eric Smalley | Wired | December 9, 2011

Need to scour the world’s patent databases for a particular chemical compound? There’s a cloud for that. IBM has released the Strategic IP Insight Platform (SIIP), a cloud-based data analytics system designed to give a shot in the arm to businesses’ intellectual property efforts. The system searches the US Patent and Trademark Office, the European Patent Office and the World Intellectual Property Organization patent databases, as well as abstracts from MEDLINE, the US government’s scientific literature database.

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IBM Tries To Put Twitter In Patent Cage

Brian Proffitt | ReadWrite | November 5, 2013

This may have been the day that IBM actually started to look desperate. In an update to its S-1 filing prior to its initial public offering some time this week, Twitter somewhat casually revealed that IBM has notified the social media company that it is infringing on three of IBM's patents. Read More »