ip politics

Yet Another Round Of ACTA Negotiations In Sight

Axel H. Horns
November 09, 2010 19:49

As reported earlier, the Anti-Counterfeiting Trade Agreement (ACTA) is a proposed plurilateral agreement for the purpose of establishing international standards on intellectual property rights enforcement. After a series of draft text leaks in 2008, 2009 and 2010 the negotiating parties had...

News From ACTA Negotiations

Axel H. Horns
July 15, 2010 21:48

The ninth round of negotiations on the proposed Anti-Counterfeiting Trade Agreement (ACTA) was held in Lucerne, Switzerland, from June 28 to July 01, 2010. After the eighth round of negotiations on ACTA held in Wellington, New Zealand, from April 12 to April 16, 2010, a redacted version of the...

The Patent System And Its Problem Of Scaling

Axel H. Horns
July 14, 2010 21:49

There are myths about patents on computer-implemented inventions a.k.a. software patents which won't ever die.One of them is the allegation that patents are a tool to steal a software developer / programmer the hard-earned fruits of labor. The software is the developer's / programmer's own work...

German Bundestag Meets Innovation

Axel H. Horns
June 24, 2010 12:16

Politicians love to preach on 'innovation'. Europe shall become the most innovative region on earth, and, of course, Germany requests to have a full share of the fruits of her orientation towards technological progress.The lower chamber of the German Parliament, the Bundestag, is a distingushed...

IP And The Fight On Business Models

Axel H. Horns
June 23, 2010 20:13

In my previous posting I had reported and commented on certain lobbying efforts of (newspaper) publishing companies. Those entities were used to run on a long-established business model which apparently is doomed to fail in the age of the Internet. But the publishing companies in question won't...