Taylor Swift makes 'Swiftmas' trademark bid; BBC News, 12/11/15

BBC News; Taylor Swift makes 'Swiftmas' trademark bid:

"Taylor Swift is seeking to trademark the word "Swiftmas" and "1989", the name of her album, in the US.

It is the 25-year-old's latest attempt to stop others from using phrases associated with her on merchandise.

"Swiftmas" is the word the singer's fans use to describe the random acts of kindness she makes, such as giving them unexpected presents.

Earlier this year Swift applied to trademark some of her song lyrics such as "this sick beat".

The pop star submitted her requests to the US Patent and Trademark Office on 3 December."

Germany, Italy Leading Resistance To EU Ratification Of Marrakesh Treaty, Blind Union Says; Intellectual Property Watch, 12/10/15

Intellectual Property Watch; Germany, Italy Leading Resistance To EU Ratification Of Marrakesh Treaty, Blind Union Says:

"The World Intellectual Property Organization Marrakesh Treaty to Facilitate Access to Published Works for Persons Who Are Blind, Visually Impaired or Otherwise Print Disabled was adopted on 27 June 2013. In a press release today, the European Blind Union (EBU) said “while a range of countries such as India, Mexico, El Salvador, Argentina, Paraguay, Mali and others have already ratified the Marrakesh Treaty, the EU and its members are still failing in doing so.”...

According to the release, 21 EU member states have expressed their consent for a proposed compromise, while seven members “led by Germany and Italy,” have rejected the compromise and “are forming a blocking minority which stalemates the ongoing ratification negotiations.”...

This week, WIPO’s Standing Committee on Copyright and Related Rights (SCCR), which negotiated the Marrakesh Treaty, is meeting for discussions on further exceptions and limitations to copyright, this time for the benefit of libraries, archives, research and educational institutions, and people with other disabilities than visual impairment (IPW, WIPO, 7 December 2015)."

Intellectual Property: The Secret Sauce Of Great Products; Forbes, 12/7/15

David Pridham, Forbes; Intellectual Property: The Secret Sauce Of Great Products:

"Intellectual property (IP) is much in the news of late. But unfortunately, the coverage is mostly about patent litigation and patent reform.

Lost in all this reportage is the positive and powerful role IP plays outside of the courtroom — in the daily operations of the enterprise. Here, largely unnoticed, IP serves as one of the key drivers of business success in today’s Knowledge Economy.

Take corporate revenues. These are often heavily dependent upon intellectual property — margins and market share are buttressed by brands, trademarks and patents, after all — but this fact is largely unreported by the media. Similarly, IP and other intangible assets, while compromising up to 80% of the market value of public companies today, are rarely reflected on corporate balance sheets, thanks to a 600-year-old accounting system designed for a bygone era in which tangible assets like plant, equipment, and raw materials were the chief sources of wealth.

It’s no surprise, then, that some people call IP “the secret sauce of corporate value creation.”

I’ll be revealing many of IP’s secrets with this new “IP at Work” column you’re reading — the first-ever regular column in a mainstream business publication that focuses on the ways that intellectual property can be deployed inside the enterprise to enhance corporate performance."

A misguided attempt to “defend trade secrets”; Washington Post, 12/2/15

David Post, Washington Post; A misguided attempt to “defend trade secrets” :

"Along with 41 colleagues, I recently joined a letter submitted to the Committee opposing DTSA in which we tried to point out some of the ways in which putting this weapon in the hands of trade secret owners is likely to backfire, becoming a “strategic weapon” that will be used mostly for anti-competitive purposes that have nothing to do with preventing “cyber-espionage.” [A more detailed critique of the ex parte seizure provisions can be found in this article by Eric Goldman, one of the authors of the law professors’ letter]

It is often difficult, when considering intellectual property law, to see the downside of proposals meant to strengthen legal protection (while relatively easy to see the upside). Trade secret law has profound effects on employee mobility; the vast majority of trade secret litigation in this country involves employees moving from one company to another (and allegedly taking their former employer’s trade secrets with them). The DTSA will have little or no effect on Chinese government agents, but it is likely to have a deeper and much more lasting effect on the health of the labor market in this country, and not for the better."

The Defend Trade Secrets Act: IP legislation ready to move forward now; The Hill, 12/2/15

David J. Kappos, The Hill; The Defend Trade Secrets Act: IP legislation ready to move forward now:

"The Defend Trade Secrets Act of 2015 (DTSA), for which identical bills were proposed with bipartisan support in both the House and Senate on July 29, 2015, would significantly improve federal protections to curb trade secret theft and thus secure the value of trade secrets. In our modern knowledge economy where (no surprise) knowledge is a source of immense value, American companies are finding themselves the victims of trade secret theft at an alarming rate. Unscrupulous business practices free-riding off of the investment of innovative competitors is hardly a recent phenomenon. But the impact of mass digitization has enabled theft on an unprecedented scale. A 2013 U.S. Chamber of Commerce study estimated the cost of cybercrime to the United States was upward of $120 billion; a 2014 PricewaterhouseCoopers/CREATe.org report estimated that theft of trade secrecy amounts to 1-3 percent of U.S. GDP."

How the TPP Will Affect You and Your Digital Rights; Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF), 12/8/15

Maira Sutton, Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF); How the TPP Will Affect You and Your Digital Rights:

"The Internet is a diverse ecosystem of private and public stakeholders. By excluding a large sector of communities—like security researchers, artists, libraries, and user rights groups—trade negotiators skewed the priorities of the Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP) towards major tech companies and copyright industries that have a strong interest in maintaining and expanding their monopolies of digital services and content. Negotiated in secret for several years with overwhelming influence from powerful multinational corporate interests, it's no wonder that its provisions do little to nothing to protect our rights online or our autonomy over our own devices. For example, everything in the TPP that increases corporate rights and interests is binding, whereas every provision that is meant to protect the public interest is non-binding and is susceptible to get bulldozed by efforts to protect corporations.

Below is a list of communities who were excluded from the TPP deliberation process, and some of the main ways that the TPP's copyright and digital policy provisions will negatively impact them. Almost all of these threats already exist in the United States and in many cases have already impacted users there, because the TPP reflects the worst aspects of the U.S. Digital Millennium Copyright Act (DMCA). The TPP threatens to lock down those policies so these harmful consequences will be more difficult to remedy in future copyright reform efforts in the U.S. and the other eleven TPP countries. The impacts could also be more severe in those other countries because most of them lack the protections of U.S. law such as the First Amendment and the doctrine of fair use."

Senate Panel Leaders Condemn Companies for Drug Price Hikes; Associated Press via New York Times, 12/9/15

Associated Press via New York Times; Senate Panel Leaders Condemn Companies for Drug Price Hikes:

"The leaders of a Senate panel are condemning four companies for aggressively increasing prices for prescription drugs. They say the companies have exploited a system lacking in competition to hike prices for critically needed medicines.

An investigation by the Senate Special Committee on Aging focuses on Turing Pharmaceuticals, Valeant Pharmaceuticals, Retrophin Inc. and Rodelis Therapeutics. The first two faced especially harsh criticism.

"The Turing and Valeant price spikes have been egregious," Sen. Susan Collins, the Maine Republican who heads the panel, said at a hearing Wednesday.

Collins added that like those two companies, Retrophin and Rodelis also bought the rights to brand-name drugs whose patents had expired and then hiked their prices.

Public outrage boiled over this fall after news that Turing increased by more than 5,000 percent the price of Daraprim, a drug used to treat a life-threatening infection, jacking it up from $13.50 to $750 per pill."